CHICAGO – A self-professed atheist who grew up in a Christian home says she has been unable to escape an inner awareness that God is with her, thus shedding light on an inward struggle perhaps faced by other non-believers.

As explained in her essay, King said she once “believed in the Bible,” “feared hell,” and considered herself “a ‘born again’ Christian who loved God with all her heart.” Like many young people, however, she walked away from her family’s faith when she was a teenager and found herself drifting toward atheism.

“The story of my departure from the church resembles those of many others who have abandoned the flock,” she observed. “When I was about 16, I started asking questions during services that my youth pastors couldn’t or didn’t want to answer.”

Those questions continued to bother King, and she found the youth pastors’ responses to them unsatisfactory. As a result, her faith dwindled. She slowly lost confidence in her family’s religious convictions. Eventually, she realized that she was not a Christian.

“I didn’t believe there was a God, or heaven and hell,” King remembered. “It wasn’t even a choice that I made. I just slowly stopped believing until all of it was gone. Or so I thought.”

However, King confessed that scrubbing her mind of all belief in God has proven so far to be an impossible task. “God lingers with me,” she wrote, adding, “somehow God has found a way to stick around in my mind.” Even though King now describes herself as an atheist,” she says she still has an intuitive feeling that God is with her.

“The idea of God pesters me and makes me think that maybe I’m not as devoted to my beliefs as I’d like to think I am and would like to be,” King explained. “Maybe I’m still subconsciously afraid of hell and want to go to heaven when I die. It’s confusing and frustrating to feel the presence of something you don’t believe in.”

Evidently, King is not alone. She cites research that reveals a remnant of belief among atheists today.

“According to a Pew Research Center poll about religion and atheism last year, 8 percent of self-identified atheists believe in God or a ‘universal spirit,’” she wrote. “Not a huge proportion, but considering that an atheist is by definition a person who denies the existence of God, that 8 percent highlights something very curious about belief.”

Though she still thinks God does not exist, she says maintaining that belief is not easy.

“When we opt for atheism,” she stated, “we are doing hard work to battle against what our minds are generally inclined and well-equipped to do: believe.”

“I’m not sure what to do about God,” King concluded. “If I could figure out a way to banish this figure from my psyche, I would. But psychology is not on my side. … I may be stuck with his shadow forever. While I remain steadfast in my (non)belief, I also feel I have no choice but to accept that I’m an atheist with a sense for God and that without this kink in my beliefs, I might not strive to understand myself better.”

As previously reported, a number of scientists in recent years have proposed that belief in God is naturally ingrained into all people and is something that “cannot be expunged.” Similarly, a report last year found that nearly half of atheists, agnostics, and those with no religious preference in the U.S. see evidence in the universe for a creator, supporting the Bible’s assertion in Romans 1:20 that the invisible things of God “are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”

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Mglass

Childhood beliefs are hard to shake off. Queen Elizabeth I was Protestant but was uncomfortable with the idea of married clergy. Many people who would deny being superstitious would nevertheless avoid walking under ladders.

On the other hand, religious people have often commented on the need to educate the young. “Give me a child until he is seven…” is the cry.

How then do people break away from traditional beliefs? One way is a conscious decision not to teach these ideas to their children. Responsible parents take care not to even mention common superstitions or other beliefs that they have come to reject. The parents themselves may not be able to completely shake off a traditional belief, but by not teaching this belief to their children their children will be free of this belief that burdened their parents.

One reason for the growth in unbelief in the younger generation is that their parents did not pass on to them the faith that they were raised in. Or, if they did raise their children in their beliefs, they took care not to pass on the beliefs that they disagreed with.

Hence the widespread rejection by Catholics of the church’s official teaching on birth control and the decline of many forms of Protestantism.

Cady555

Yes. Someone quipped this week that the people who reject climate change science are still willing to accept meteorological predictions from a Pennsylvania rodent.

Superstition feels good. It’s fun. Friday the 13th. Horoscopes. Crossing your fingers. Knocking on wood. It’s harmless. But the strength of our superstitions has no bearing on the truth of those superstitions.

Mglass

Superstitions sound like fun, but they’re not. They play on people’s minds, especially when they are vulnerable. Horoscopes are not just harmless fun because some people take the nonsense in magazines quite seriously, to their detriment.

A particularly nasty superstition is one about the evil eye. This belief has the ability to make people believe that a harmless compliment is a dangerous threat. To teach a child to believe in this superstition is a form of child abuse.

This old dad would advise every parent to refrain from telling any child any thing that they don’t believe in. More than that, if you believe that something is a superstition and the child brings it up, tell that child that it is a superstition or a lot of nonsense. This will help to weaken its force.

Cady555

I agree. What I was getting at is that superstition continues because people like it, not because it is real.

afchief

Einstein proved that anything material to exist has to have length, breadth, height, depth and one more, probably the most important one “TIME” it needs time to exist. So the evolution/creation debate has to go back in time to the actual beginning of time or nothing material could scientifically exist. Time can’t result from an explosion as there would be nothing in existence to explode!

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Frank Dorka

…and a man and his rib was made into a wife in a garden with a talking snake, an evil apple and a guilt over being naked that ended up with two sons that somehow found women to marry. Makes much more sense than evolution, doesn’t it?

Bob Johnson

That is chapter 2, when God created man on Day 2 after He created heaven and earth. In chapter 1, God creates both male and female together on Day 6.

Frank Dorka

Who was keeping the notes, I wonder?

afchief

It sure does!!! God said, and I believe it.

afchief

Psalm 14:1 (NASB)

14 The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they have committed abominable [a]deeds;
There is no one who does good.

Randy Wanat

Do you agree with that translation? That people who disavow the existence of gods are incapable of doing good things? If another holy book said the same thing about disavowing their deity, would you give it any credence? If not, why would you expect others to do the same regarding your holy book? Please, respond without resorting to special pleading. Thanks in advance!

afchief

Hebrews 9:27 (NASB) And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,

Randy Wanat

Avoiding difficult questions by repeating Bible verses is a defense mechanism meant to keep you from confronting ideas that endanger dear beliefs. I understand that you will not honestly deal with the questions I have posed because you are talking to reinforce your beliefs, not to understand or discuss. You’re preaching to yourself to bolster your own religiosity. When you get past that stage, let me know.

afchief

Sorry, but I live by the Word of God. It is life! It is love! It is truth! It is living!! And it is the ONLY way!!!

Hebrews 4:12 (NASB) For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Randy Wanat

That’s ok. You’re obviously not yet capable of composing your own thoughts about your religious beliefs. Maybe, some day, you will be.

afchief

But you have been blinded by satan and do not even know it!!!

2 Corinthians 4:4 (NASB) in whose case the god of this world (satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelieving

Randy Wanat

Like I said, when you can compose your own thoughts about your beliefs, let me know.

afchief

My beliefs will never change. EVER! They will always rest on the Word of God.

Kyle Everett

It’s so sad that Randy Wanat asked you a sincere question and all you can do is reply with a bible quote that doesn’t even answer him. You happily tell others that they are wicked and cruel and that God judges them because they do not bow down to him yet can’t find the intellectual honesty to answer valid questions put against you. If that’s what Christianity is about then count me out.

afchief

We Christians live by the Word of God. Quoting scripture IS our answer.

Frank Dorka

A small amount of Christians live by the word of God. The rest ignore what they have never read. Quoting scripture is your excuse.

afchief

No, we ALL live by the Word of God, period!!!

Matthew 4:4 (NASB) But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”

1Faith1Hope

Hi Kyle – please see my response to Randy above. Thanks!

Chrissy Vee

What is good in man’s mind is different than God’s standard of what good is.

~But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.~ Isaiah 64:6

Without belief in Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, and repentance of sin, man’s ‘good’ deeds are as filthy rags to God.

Randy Wanat

Is slavery good?

Chrissy Vee

I don’t think so, but apparently man made it happen anyway. Slavery to sin is the worst of all.

Randy Wanat

You don’t think slavery is good. Well, that’s good. If a slaveowner were to beat a slave so badly that the slave nearly dies, would that also be wrong in your estimation?

Chrissy Vee

I know where you are going with this, and you are obviously anti-God and trying to bait me into a debate that is just not going to happen. Sorry to disappoint. I have read enough of your comments and see where you stand. There is nothing you can tell me that will change what I believe and nothing I will tell you that will change what you believe. I have learned not to get into it with nonbelievers and especially antagonists. It’s the same old. I am also aware of the response I may receive ( it’s quite typical among others like you) which will not get a response from me.
Unless you repent of your sins and turn to Christ to save your soul, you will never have godly, wisdom, knowledge or understanding.
~But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.~ 1 Corinthians 2:14
You have a choice. Make the right one while there is still time. Peace.

Randy Wanat

I’m just curious why you disagree with your deity about slavery being wrong, and beating slaves being wrong. If you were crafting a constitution, and you were omnipotent and omniscient, and the perfection of morality, you would surely say that slavery is not allowed and punishable by law. And, you certainly would consider beating slaves also punishable by law. Your deity, when crafting the laws by which a society was to conduct itself…a constitution of sorts…codified slavery explicitly, and explicitly permitted physically abusing slaves, as long as a beating didn’t result in death within 48 hours. And, at no point did your deity ever denounce slavery. You are more moral than your deity. You don’t get your morality from the Bible; you get it from being a member of a social species that must cooperate with one another for its best chances of survival as a species. If not, you would agree with your deity that slavery is acceptable.

1Faith1Hope

Hi Randy – I am a Christian, and I would like to respond to your question if I may. I agree with Kyle, afchief, that you did not respond to Randy’s question. The Bible verse you gave didn’t answer him. Before you say “The Bible has all the answers” I agree, but sometimes a plain question requires a plain answer. I will try to give a plain answer. “Good” in God’s terms means “holy” or without sin – completely. While we, as men, believe we are “good” because we, hopefully, haven’t committed murder or other heinous acts, still we lie, steal, cheat, etc., and break the 10 commandments often. Christians still sin too, we are all sinners until the day we die. Christians, however, are covered by our acceptance of the complete payment Jesus made for us on the cross and, when we sin, we are sorely convicted of it, and ask forgiveness to regain fellowship with God. Salvation is not a “license” to sin. So, to accept God’s gift of salvation we need to realize and agree that we have sinned against perfect, holy God, ask His forgiveness, and repent or turn away from sin, asking for His help to do so. Believe that Jesus paid our debt in full, and that He rose from the dead as evidence that He truly is the son of God. God made it very simple, so that everyone can understand it. We, as Christians, should be careful not to make it sound complicated when it is not. Can men do good things? Of course we can. It is silly to state otherwise. I sincerely hope this helps.

Randy Wanat

Thanks. 🙂

I know what most Christians would say about such a passage. There are ways of rationalizing almost every atrocious thing in the Bible: rape, murder, incest, genocide, human sacrifice, slavery…but, when someone spouts off a passage that is not one with any finesse (which you’ve notably attempted to use to get around the universality of the statement in the passage), they do so because they’re trying to dehumanize others and separate themselves from people who are different, even if that separation is internal. Making him confront his own words is necessary to get him to behave like a civil person.

The writer of Psalm 14 was an idiot. The proportions of atheists and Christians in prisons shows quite clearly that atheists find it a lot easier to be good than Christians.

Frank Dorka

It is said that the rate is higher than 99% of prisoners claim to believe in a god. Go figure?

Frank Dorka

One “atheist” has an opinion and the Christian News conglomerate jumps all over it. The religious must be getting very antsy.

Josey

Don’t worry Ms. King, keep rejecting the Truth and Jesus Christ who is Truth and you shall have your wish granted, sad but it is your choice and with that choice as in every choice there are consequences.
2 timothy 4: 3,4 3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Orion Jones

“in every choice there are consequences.”

Only false beliefs are accompanied by threats.

Josey

It is not a false belief and I pray for Ms. King that she will find her first love again.

Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
signed Jesus…:)

That is the problem. You are trying to apply the standard of science to a thing that is not science. “Blue sleeps faster than Tuesday” is a proper English sentence. Does not mean anything though.

Here is the other thing. It is not up to creationists to convince you of God/Christ. It is up to God/Christ to do that.

1Faith1Hope

Really. Then why did Jesus say – Mark 16:15 “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” Why did Jesus give us the Great Commission? How many dead people can “go.” ???

Amos Moses

Those in Christ, to whom the Great Commission was give are alive in Him. They are not dead any longer, they are regenerated.

Also, quoting Mark is not a good idea for that passage, the end of Matthew 28 would be better. Most bibles put that bit of Mark 16:9-20 in parenthesis as it was believed to have been added later. Most accept that Mark ended at 16:8.

But it is a good question. Thanx

Orion Jones

“It is not a false belief.”

So why the intimidation?

Ambulance Chaser

Real beliefs are accompanied by evidence.

afchief

Evidence? Look around you. That complex body you live in, do you really think it evolved over billions of years? Really? It takes MORE faith to believe in evolution then it does in God.

Hebrews 11:6 (NASB) And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

Ambulance Chaser

Yes, I do.

afchief

I am afraid you don’t know what you are talking about. If true science is a quest for knowledge, how about considering that the reason humans are 98.5 genetically similar to chimpanzees is because of a common Designer? There is no design without a Designer!

“The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands..” – Psalm 19:1

All of God’s creation is a thing of beauty. Beauty is a result of design. I bet you cannot improve the beauty of a woman’s face by rearranging its components.

Next time you’re making love with your loved one, ask yourself how natural selection could have designed such a marvelous means of emotional intimacy, bonding, and procreation with another human being. How did the male organ know how to evolve to fit hand in glove with the female organ? They would both have to know what the other was doing. To believe it happened by chance is to believe nonsense, absolute nonsense. And if that is your belief, it also makes it your religion. The car you drive is a product of design, not chaos. It was once only a concept in the mind of the Designer. So were you.

Evolution is a RELIGION! If it is your belief based upon the assumptions, speculations and prejudices of false science and their priests (so called scientists), that makes is your belief system and therefore your RELIGION! You cannot prove it. Your “facts” are merely the words of the priests of your religion.

TheKingOfRhye

”
how about considering that the reason humans are 98.5 genetically
similar to chimpanzees is because of a common Designer? There is no
design without a Designer!”

How about considering that the reason is because they had a common ancestor?

Just Call Me Jess

no faith needed for evolution. There are reams of evidence for it. None for god. Our complex bodies aren’t evidence for a god at all. If they were there wouldn’t be so many flaws to them

I don’t know. Neither do you. But one thing is certain – the way to find out doesn’t involve looking up some text from an ancient book written by superstitious nutcases. The way we’ll find out involves scientific inquiry.

afchief

You see, as an atheist you do have faith! You have faith that life was created from non-life billions of years ago.

To me that takes MORE faith than to believe that God made the heavens and earth.

No. I don’t have faith. I don’t need faith in order to believe in things for which there is evidence. Faith is believing in things for which there is no evidence, or pretending to know things you don’t know. I don’t do that.

afchief

No, but you do have faith. You have faith that somehow life started billions of years ago. You are just waiting for the evidence (which will never come).

I already have the answer to life. I need no further answers. I know that the god of this world (satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so they cannot see the truth!

Not one person who believes in evolution can tell me how life started from non-life. I keep waiting………………………………………………………

Randy Wanat

Ignorance of science does not make ancient myths true.

afchief

I’m still waiting for an atheist to explain (and evidence) how life started from non-life

Waiting………………………………………………………….

Randy Wanat

That is not evolution. Demonstrating your own scientific ignorance isn’t helping your argument.

afchief

Ahhhhh yes, avoiding the question!!!

Still waiting……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Randy Wanat

What, exactly, do you think evolution is, according to science? Please, be specific. We can’t address the reality until we agree on what is being discussed. By the way, you DO recognize that, if evolution were not true, that doesn’t make your Bible story true by default, right?

afchief

How many times do I have to say it???? How did life start from non-life?

As a Christian I know, that I know, that I know the Word of God is true. Once I gave my life to Him, He put His Spirit within me. It is by faith!!!

Hebrews 11:6 (NASB) And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

Randy Wanat

Life from non-life is not evolution. So, it appears that you don’t understand the subject at even a rudimentary level.

Again: do you acknowledge that, even if there were no scientific explanation for life on Earth, your Bible story doesn’t just win by default?

afchief

Ohhh I understand the subject perfectly. I have been waiting for an evolutionist or atheists to tell me how life started from non-life. No one can. So it is ALL based on faith (the religion of evolution) that life somehow started from non-life.

Ohhh but there is scientific explanation for life on Earth. The Word of God does say it.

Romans 1:19-20 (NASB) because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Can you explain how earth got here?
How it is within 1 foot of either burning up or freezing?
Can you explain how air got here?
How water got here?
Can you explain how the sun happens to be the exact distance from the earth to produce plant life?
Can you explain how you brain developed?
Can you explain why there are/were over 7000 languages?
Can you explain how man and woman were made to come together?
How did man develop sperm? A woman an egg?

I can explain it VERY easily.

Randy Wanat

Evolution is not “life from non-life.” The only people who say it is are religious fundamentalists who don’t like science because it shrinks their deity.

afchief

Well what did we evolve from? How did it start? If you believe in evolution it has to have a beginning. What is it?

Randy Wanat

Let’s get even simpler.

Let’s first recognize what evolution is, and what it is not.

Evolution is: the change in allelic frequency in a population over time.

Evolution is not: how life began, how the universe began, dogs turning into butterflies, crocoducks, or anything else apologists for Biblical literalism claim it to be.

To make sure we’re on the same page, please explain what you understand “change in allelic frequency in a population over time” to mean, in your own words.

afchief

I agree the debate is not about evolution. I believe in evolution. I am not a scientist but I can look at a dog and see evolution at work. Breed a poodle with a cocker spaniel and you get a cockapoo. The result is a new breed of the same species. The cockapoo is still a canine…dog family…it is not a new species of animal.

That is micro-evolution….changes within species…we all believe that. We see evidence of that all around us. Look at your own children for Pete’s sake. Christians do not deny evolution!!

But there is ZERO evidence of MACRO-evolution…changes across species…a frog becoming a bird. None. All they have are theories. Theories are not proof.

The debate is not about EVOLUTION…it is over ORIGINS. All of the “theories” are meaningless if they/you can’t tell us where the dirt came from.

Randy Wanat

Cross-breeding isn’t evolution per se. Evolution occurs at the population level, not the individual level. Breeding two different breeds together is no more evolution than a white person having children with a black person.

So, it is evident we need to go over what evolution ACTUALLY is, instead of what religious apologists tell you it is.

Do you understand what a species is? If so, define “species” in your own words.

Without understanding what the fundamental ideas are, understanding the over-arching concept is more difficult.

afchief

If evolution was true would we still be calling it a theory?

Randy Wanat

What does “theory” mean in science?

You realize that words can have different meanings in different contexts, yes?

You realize, also, that there is the THEORY of gravity and the germ THEORY of disease, right?

You know that even Answers in Genesis, the batshittiest creationist organization on the planet, advises against referring to evolution as “just a theory” because scientific theories aren’t defined like the colloquial meaning of”theory,” right? Even the kookiest creationists are telling you that this premise betrays profound scientific ignorance. Perhaps look up “scientific theory.”

Bob Johnson

Yes, it would still be a theory because theories, can never be proven true. So if you or anyone else can find proof that it is wrong, say a bunny rabbit in the Precambrian, then it will no longer be a theory.

TheKingOfRhye

From the American Association for the Advancement of Science:

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some
aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been
repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such
fact-supported theories are not “guesses” but reliable accounts of the
real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than “just a
theory.” It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic
theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of
gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like
evolution, is an accepted fact.

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

A common ancestor. It is likely that early Earth’s atmosphere consisted of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor. Metabolism may have played a part in breaking down carbon dioxide into tiny molecules in a catalyst, allowing for biological material to form. That’s just one theory that scientists have, however, the likelihood of that happening without some sort of designer or aid is very very very tiny.

Nikola Tasev

“Can you explain how earth got here?
How it is within 1 foot of either burning up or freezing?”
People moving up one foot get burned up, and people moving one foot down get frozen?! Wow. I see you understand many subjects perfectly.
Edit: The orbit of the Earth moves it millions of kilometers closer and further from the Sun every year. I didn’t notice life perishing.

TheKingOfRhye

Knowledge, or a lack of knowledge of how life originated, is irrelevant to someone being an atheist. One can say they don’t know, and still be an atheist.

Amos Moses

Ignorance of God does not make Him a myth.

Randy Wanat

Let’s consider that. Throughout the last ten thousand years, there have been thousands of supernatural beings and deities people have believed in. Ignorance of all of them doesn’t make them myths, either.

Your logic makes your deity just as real as Zeus, Osiris, and Quetzalcoatl. Oh, but yours is the one out of all the thousands, including the Babylonian pantheon from whence your deity comes, that is ACTUALLY real. And, what a coincidence that it just so happens to be the one YOU believe in! What a marvelous stroke of luck! Credulity is not a virtue.

And, your holy stories are, indeed, myths. They are stories with supernatural characters intended to explain mysteries of the human experience, with tenuous connections to reality. They include stories about creating the universe, the world, people, and instructions for how people ought to live.

Amos Moses

Again, Do you have perfect knowledge of every thing?

Bob Johnson

No, but it seems like you do.

Amos Moses

So again,,,,,,,,,,,,, neither of us do…. we agree.

You have absolutely no means whatsoever to make a statement as you did because you do not know certain things, in fact the volumes of what we do not know is unfathomable.

You have no basis in truth to say anything does not exist, much less God. The only way for you to be able to make that statement with any possible veracity is to be as God. But then you would be God and your statement again would have absolutely no veracity.

Bob Johnson

Yet you speak with certainty about how one gets into heaven. And what will happen to those who do not accept Jesus Christ.

So it certainly appears that you have perfect knowledge.

Amos Moses

“And what will happen to those who do not accept Jesus Christ.”

Christ chooses us, we do not choose him. We are not capable of choosing Him.

No, i do not have perfect knowledge, but we do have His perfect word.

Nikola Tasev

“No, i do not have perfect knowledge, but we do have His perfect word.”
How do you know what’s in the Bible is His Perfect word?
What you have is a translation of a copy of a copy of a translation. In fact, we have many different versions of it, and no originals. The earliest known complete gospels are from the fourth and fifth Century and lack important parts, like the scene with the woman caught in adultery, and the resurrection.
There is some evidence it was based on real events (names of officials), but no evidence for the miracles or other supernatural claims.

Randy Wanat

What do you mean, again? You hadn’t asked that yet. There is no reason to think your deity is any more real than any other deity. Are you suggesting that you think all the other gods are also real? Or, do you dismiss all the other gods and think that your favorite one just so happens to be the only real one?

You don’t have perfect knowledge about everything, right? Does that mean you accept that leprechauns are real? Or bigfoot? Or the Loch Ness monster? Chupacabra? Fairies? Alien abductions? I would guess that you dismiss them due to there being no evidence to support their existence, and you don’t accept stories as compelling evidence. Same goes for me regarding your deity. I treat all deities and cryptozoids and fantastic claims equally: I don’t accept any of them as true until there is compelling evidence. Stories don’t cut it.

Is there a better standard for determining which claims to believe and which to reject that does not result in accepting mutually exclusive things or special pleading? I know of none.

Amos Moses

“What do you mean, again? You hadn’t asked that yet. ”

In the last two days, I have asked it of several people. The answer is always the same. “No.”

“There is no reason to think your deity is any more real than any other deity.”

Here is the problem with that position. It cannot be proven. It is your proposition, it is a negative position and we cannot prove a negative. It is a logical fallacy. The only way for that position to be proven is if a person has perfect knowledge of everything and as everyone has said, they do not. So you can rest on your unproveable theory that no god, or even God, exists. But, and here is the really juicy part, you are here pontificating it as the correct position when you cannot possible prove it or even know it.

Randy Wanat

Do you understand that rejecting a claim as true is not the same as asserting that the claim is false?

Amos Moses

Your claim is false by the mountain of evidence and is rejected.

Thank you and have a good day.

Randy Wanat

I have made no claim. I have rejected the claims about deities existing based on the dearth of supporting evidence. Why do you assume what I think? Does it make it easier to argue against me, or are you afraid that if you found out what others actually think it might threaten your beliefs? What is the reason for putting words in someone else’s mouth? Do you want to preach at me, or discuss with me?

Amos Moses

Your claim:
“And, your holy stories are, indeed, myths. They are stories with supernatural characters intended to explain mysteries of the human experience, with tenuous connections to reality. They include stories about creating the universe, the world, people, and instructions for how people ought to live.”

Your own words, your claim. A claim you cannot prove because as you have said, you do not have perfect knowledge of everything. Period.

You are only here to make claims that cannot be proven, by your own admission. Your thinking is futile because you cannot even recognize your own logical fallacies.

Have fun……………………………

Randy Wanat

What part of this do you think is wrong? Please, be specific.

[S]tories with supernatural characters intended to explain mysteries of the human experience, with tenuous connections to reality. They include stories about creating the universe, the world, people, and instructions for how people ought to live.

Amos Moses

“What part of this do you think is wrong?”

That you have no perfect knowledge of whether or not it is true and no way to prove your assertion.

Randy Wanat

Do you disagree that the stories have supernatural characters? Or, that their connection to reality is tenuous (referring to real places, sometimes real people, sometimes real events, in much the way historical fiction novels do)? Or, that they attempt to explain mysteries of the human experience? Or, that they include advice for how people should live? If you think any part of this does not apply to your Bible, please be specific about what doesn’t apply as you see it. It all applies at all levels as far as I can tell.

Amos Moses

Do you agree that it is pointless to try to convince a person, who lies to them-self about all the overwhelming amount of evidence in front of them because they are a liar?

Really, what is the point? No amount of evidence is going to convince a liar that they are a liar when the first person they lie to is them-self to convince them-self of their lie. They are going to stick to their lie as if that is going to convince others.

FAIL!

Randy Wanat

Are you accusing me of dishonesty, or admitting your own? If the former, that is a weak attempt to avoid the truth. If the latter, I wish I could say it was a surprise, as apologetics requires willingness to profess basic facts are false to show that absurdities are true.

Amos Moses

“Are you accusing me of dishonesty,”

So you are convicted by your own answer.

The guilty flee when no one pursues.

Randy Wanat

Is there any question you could answer directly AND honestly?

Amos Moses

You can’t seem to do that. i have given you honest answer, which it appears you are not accustom to receiving.

Randy Wanat

Actually, I referred to the Bible as myth AND included a definition that applies directly and wholly to the Bible. You said it was wrong because evidence. I asked for clarification, and you called me a liar. You neither said what part of the definition you disagreed with, nor provided evidence, nor demonstrated my dishonesty. How is calling me a liar clarification? Is that a very Christian thing to do? Someone asks for information and you call them a liar? Do you think that kind of behavior would lead anybody to Christ?

And, you have yet to clarify how the definition of myth does not apply to the Bible or cite any of the evidence you claim exists that proves the Bible is true. If someone has evidence but refuses to show it, it isn’t evidence. And, if you disagree but refuse to say why, you’re merely being contrarian.

What do you think would happen to you if you just answered my questions rather than passing judgement on me to dismiss me? What is it that scares you so much that you have to shut down all meaningful communication?

Complex organisms are evidence of evolution. If my body was designed by a god, he didn’t do a very good job. The blood vessels supplying the human eye are attached on the wrong side, which means I have a blind spot that my brain must counterbalance by making up visual data based on the surrounding areas. This is not evidence that the eye was created by a designer – not a competent one anyway. All it takes to believe in evolution is the ability to reason.

Your holy book is a book of myths and guesses about the natural world, written by people who had no tools to find out how the universe works. Now we have the tools, but people like you prefer superstition.

afchief believes many groups including cosmologist, biologist, psychiatrists, lawyers, and economists are all wrong. And most especially liberals are wrong.

afchief

Yes, I believe evolution is a lie. A lie straight from the pits of hell!!!

Nikola Tasev

I suggest you tell this to your doctor next time you get an infection. He’ll get you the old cheap antibiotics. If evolution is a lie they will still be effective, because the microbes can’t evolve to become resistant.

I very much like the ending:
“If the evolution of life is a fact, it means we are not created equal, which means that war, racism and genocide are easily justifiable. If evolution is true, the strong and powerful exterminating the weak and poor would ultimately benefit the human race.
If you think so, you are part of the problem of the all the evil in the world.”
In essence – “if something being true makes me uneasy, then it is not true”. So next time you are gravely ill you can say “is my illness is a fact, it means I am suffering and may die soon. If you think so, you are part of the problem. Therefore I am not ill”. You can save a lot of money by using this logic!!

afchief

I very much like this one!!

Life From Non-Life?

At the core of evolutionary theory is the big assumption that life somehow arose from non-life, that by pure chance the right chemicals happened to be in the right place, in the right arrangement, at the right time, under the right conditions, and by some mysterious, unknown electrochemical process — POOF — life created itself! This assumption is completely contrary to a universally accepted and proven law of science, known as the second law of thermodynamics, which states that “All processes (left to themselves) go toward a greater state of disorder, disorganisation, disarrangement and less complexity.”4

In other words, inanimate matter never increases its own order, organisation or complexity–these always decrease! And even if the elements could arrange themselves into a certain definite pattern, as is necessary for life, they could not make themselves a living cell because LIFE is not a mere physical arrangement of chemicals! The likelihood of this happening is so far-fetches that Princeton University Professor of Biology Edwin Conklin has said: “The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.”

Did Charley make a monkey out of you?

As for the so-called “simple cell”, from which the evolutionists say all living creatures have evolved, Look Magazine declared, “THE CELL IS AS COMPLICATED AS NEW YOUR CITY.” The well-known evolutionist Loren Eisely likewise admitted in his book, The Immense Journey, that “Intensified effort revealed that even the supposedly simple amoeba was a complex, self-operating chemical factory. The notion that he was a simple blob, the discovery of whose chemical composition would enable us instantly to set the life process in operation, turned out to be, at best, a monstrous caricature of the truth.”

Can you imagine a dictionary, a chemical factory, or New York City, coming into existence by itself–POOF–without any assistance from an intelligent designer, planner or creator? Such is the logic of evolution’s imaginary assumption that the infinitely complex “simple” cell accidentally came together and came alive by blind, unguided chance! Commenting on this assumption, the British biologist Woodger said, “It is simple dogmatism–asserting that what you want to believe did in fact happen.” The absurdity of this evolutionary logic is only amplified as we move on to the even more complex, multi-celled forms of life.

Nikola Tasev

“At the core of evolutionary theory is the big assumption that life somehow arose from non-life”
The evolutionary theory describes how life changed and adapted. It does not describe or depend on abiogenesis. As far as evolution is concerned the fist cell could have been created by God, space aliens, an intelligent teapot or whatever else you can think of. Evolution took over after life started existing.
“Can you imagine a dictionary, a chemical factory, or New York City, coming into existence by itself–POOF–without any assistance from an intelligent designer, planner or creator?”
None of these shows the ability to reproduce, mutate or adapt. They are not subject to random changes or natural selection. This is the reason why cities, factories or dictionaries don’t evolve. And since evolution doesn’t state that life poofs into existence, but describes how it changes from generation to generation, I don’t get the point of your comment at all.

afchief

I want to know how that cell survived in earths environment? I want to know how that cell reproduced? I want to know how man developed sperm that would impregnate a woman at the same time in history? I want to know how a man developed a sexual organ that would mate with a female organ that developed just for a male organ at the same time? I want to know how a man knew to mate with a woman? I want to know how man found woman? I want to know how man developed lungs to breath air? I want to know how/why man developed over 7000 languages? Why not just one? I want to know how man hunted for food? There are a million questions that cannot be answered by man.

But we Christians know the answers to these questions.

Nikola Tasev

“But we Christians know the answers to these questions.”
Yes you know the answers. Some of these answers are most likely not the correct ones. Even the majority of your fellow Christians are not such literalists and would not agree with you on these answers. But you don’t seem to care, or even want to know. You have your good book and it is more than enough to sate your vestigial curiosity. But in case you want to know:
“There are a million questions that cannot be answered by man.”
Most of the questions you present can, and already are, answered by man.
“I want to know how a man knew to mate with a woman?”
Just as other animals know to mate each other. Do they need someone to teach them?
“I want to know how man found woman?”
He probably used his evolution-given eyes to do that. And given the fact we exist today he found her attractive enough.
“I want to know how man developed lungs to breath air?”
His immediate ancestors had them already. We did not develop lungs (or sperm, sexual organs, or any other organ) independently from other animals.
“I want to know how/why man developed over 7000 languages?”
The development of human languages is very well understood and observed. American and Indian English didn’t poof into existence, they developed from original British English, yet they changed with time and relative isolation. If the cultural isolation lasts more, the languages drift further apart and become mutually intelligible and then separate languages entirely. Linguists can trace language history, language families with common origin and so on.
Much the same thing happen with species. When they are kept apart they drift and can become separate species. You can search “ring species” for examples.
The Catholic Church also supports evolution, so it is not Christianity vs Evolution, however much you try to present it this way. It is only fringe denominations like yours that take the Bible so literally.
Even Jesus used parables, what makes you think other parts of the Bible were not metaphorical as well?

afchief

LOL!!!!

So it just so happened that a man and woman developed at the same time? Their sexual organs developed at the same time? Their sexual organs happened to develop so they can reproduce? They developed sperm and eggs at the same time so they can reproduce?!?!?!?!?

Do you know how ludicrous that sounds???? It takes A LOT more faith to believe that happened then to believe a God created us.

Unbelievable!!!!

Yes the Word of God is so true!!!

2 Corinthians 4:4 (NASB) in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving

Nikola Tasev

“So it just so happened that a man and woman developed at the same time?”
Did you even read my comment? Humans did not develop sexual organs by themselves! We got them from our ancestors. Who got it from their ancestors. If you want to know about how sexual reproduction developed in the animal kingdom – you can search it. Ignoring the fact that we were not created independently from other animals does not help your case.

afchief

More proof that the Word of God is soooooo true!!!!!!

2 Corinthians 4:4 (NASB) in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Frank Dorka

Did God create extinction as well as evolution. Extinction IS PROVABLE!!!

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

Psalm 104 29-30 states, “When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take their breath away, they die and return to dust. When you send your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the earth.” This is definitely showing some sort of extinction/renewing event that takes place through the earth’s history.

Frank Dorka

Perhaps it explains evolution as well?

Amos Moses

“Complex organisms are evidence of evolution.”

Things do not become more complex over time, they degenerate. You seem to have it bassackwards.

What makes you think they degenerate? Surely you’re not one of those people who thinks entropy applies to evolution – are you? Because if you are, then you’re either grossly ignorant or stupid.

Amos Moses

“What makes you think they degenerate? Surely you’re not one of those people who thinks entropy applies to evolution – are you?”

Scientific observation tells all of us interested in the truth that it does. Surely you’re not one of those people who thinks entropy does not apply to evolution – are you? On what scientific basis? Where is your evidence?

Nikola Tasev

Entropy applies to closed systems – where little or no matter or energy goes in or out. Our planet gets energy from the Sun (yes, I know, it blew my mind too :)). Organisms on Earth can get more complex and evolve without being limited by entropy. Entropy increases in the Solar System, but we have several billions of year’s worth more, so this is not a problem yet.

Amos Moses

“Entropy applies to closed systems”

There are no closed systems. We live in an open universe and entropy does exist every where. You car falls apart over time, all things do, even we do. You have a flawed idea of how things work. Unless you never change the oil in your car or you never get old and decrepit.

Nikola Tasev

“There are no closed systems.”
The Univerese, as far as we know, is a closed system. Scientists can isolate systems and measure its entropy at the start and end of the experiment. The systems don’t even need to be perfectly isolated to test the entropy change, if the entropy leaks are small enough you can learn how entropy works.
“You car falls apart over time”
And when you change the oil or repair it (which is not entropy, and not even a very good metaphor) you bring it back to working state. Which is what happens when the Sun shines on Earth. Unless you state that entropy is irreversible even for open systems, in which case you car can never be fixed, and no oil changes and spare parts can ever bring it back.
“We live in an open universe and entropy does exist every where.”
Do you mean the universe is an open system? If so, can you back the claim? Where does the Universe get extra mass/energy? Conversions from one to the other are internal to the system and does not make it open.
Even so, when the Sun burns and increases its entropy it shines on Earth and decreases its entropy. That’s why heat and light engines like life, the water cycle, solar cells, wind mills, and so on can run without running out of energy. Entropy does not just mean systems can’t get any more complex. Max entropy means all dynamic processes, including life, stop working. And since life has not stopped last time I checked, there is no problem with it evolving.

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

Actually, things do get more complex over time. We have a part of the brain shared with reptiles sometimes referred to as the reptilian brain, which is the most primitive part of our brain. The limbic brain developed in mammals later on, and the neocortex is the most advanced and refers to the two hemispheres within our brain that give us speech, thought, imagination etc. We can compare our brain with that of other animals and see the differences and similarities while comparing the animals with each other as well and come up with the most likely model.

Amos Moses

Similarities does not mean it “evolved” to become more complex. Reptiles have been around for longer than humans, according to evolutionists. Which one did you talk to last week, or ever?

Sorry, fail.

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

Sorry bud, but you clearly don’t understand what you are talking about. These similarities show a progress in the fossil record indicating that the earliest creatures had more primitive brains. Through studies of skulls, scientists are able to compare prehistoric creatures with modern species and get an accurate estimate of brain size of various species. The model shows that mammals (which came later) have more developed brains and eventually evolved into apes/hominids and such.

A good example of evolution in action is the Italian wall lizard. The species was put on an island and over the course of several decades transformed into an entirely new species.

Yes, Reptiles have been around longer than humans. God said, “let the earth bring forth after it’s kind,” let is an act of permission not creation. This opens the door for the possibility of evolution through a scriptural sense as well.

Amos Moses

“Sorry bud, but you clearly don’t understand what you are talking about. ”

Yep, one of us, i.e. you, is trying to convince everyone of a fallacy.

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

Really? how so? Scripture is clear to put things to the text, when one puts science to the test and finds evolution it means that that is a plausible theory. When one compares scripture to science, “in the ancient Hebrew,” it becomes clear that the door is open for evolution even in light of Biblical truth.

Amos Moses

“when one puts science to the test and finds evolution it means that that is a plausible theory.”

No, when that happens, with the absence of God, all that you find is vain imaginings.

John N

Actually Amos, whenever you talk to somebody you talk to a reptile. Mammals did evolve from reptiles. But I guess you were not paying attention when your biology teacher went through this?

Amos Moses

“Mammals did evolve from reptiles.”

Science requires evidence. Where is yours for this assertion? How, when and where did exothermic reptiles become endothermic mammals? Where did the hair come from and when did they start feeding their young milk? It would seem an “evolutionary” backward step to have to care for the young as mammals do. Why did this happen? Where is the evidence?

Science is three things. Testability, repeatability, observation. Where is any of this in your “theory”? All there is, is a story, and nothing to show that it actually happened the way you say it did. “Evolution” is belief, it is not science. You can neither show how one species became another or if it ever did. All you have is a story and belief.

Why should i substitute your belief for mine?

So when the magician cuts a woman in half and then he tells you its “magic (evolution)” then you believe him. Right?

Amos Moses

Actually, i do believe there are talking reptiles. Several people on this forum come to mind.

jael2

Ian,
Prior to the fall ( rebellion) of man, life was perfect. Man was both physically and spiritually perfect. But due to man’s rebellion, sin entered into the world, and so did disease. And today, man continues to reap what he has sown due to his rebellion against God. Check out the Genesis chapters 1-6.

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

The Bible does actually say that God did not create the world perfect, he did say that it was very good, so the fact that you can see, breathe, run, etc is very good, but not perfect.

Bob Johnson

“Evidence?” For a deist god or a micro-manager.

afchief

For a loving God! He sent His Son to die for you. The choice is yours.

Bob Johnson

He sent Himself to try and fix that “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” problem He created in Eden.

Bob Johnson

I hate it when designers won’t take responsibility for their work.

Amos Moses

He took responsibility, He sent His son to fix what men destroyed.

Amos Moses

Actually, the choice is God/Christs.

afchief

The choice is for us to accept the sacrifice for our sins. Or not.

Amos Moses

We are dead in trespasses and sins. Dead men have no will to choose anything but death. We become regenerate through Christ only. He chooses us, we do not ever choose the things of God/Christ.

afchief

Amos, your theology is weird. Everyone has been chosen by God. It is up to us (our free will) to accept His sacrifice for us and to confess our sins.

So it begins. If your god is real, why does he sow so much dissent among his believers?

afchief

We Christians all believe in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for us. We have differences of opinion on the interpretation of some scripture. Yes, I agree it is wrong for us Christians to bicker of the small stuff, but we still love one another and KNOW we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

1Faith1Hope

That dissent is sown by the enemy, satan; not by God.

Amos Moses

No, my theology is from the bible. If it is not from the bible then it is not theology. No, everyone has NOT been chosen by God and Christ has said so. We were all created by Him but we are not all His children. John 8:23-59

Obama just spouted that nonsense in a mosque. Are you now teliing me that you and Obama are in agreement on this point? Do all Muslims go to heaven because God chose all of us?

1Faith1Hope

God offers the free gift of salvation to all. Sadly, not all will accept it. Muslims do not believe Jesus is the son of God, nor do they worship Him as God. We, therefore, do not worship the same God as Muslims.

Bob Johnson

I guess this means Jews don’t go to heaven as well.

1Faith1Hope

Jews that accept Jesus as their Savior, repent (change their mind about sin and turn from it,) and trust in Him will go to heaven. Those that deny Him will not – that is true. Some are falsely teaching that Jews receive a “pass” somehow, just for being Jews, but that is not Biblical.

Bob Johnson

What do you call a Jew that has found Christ? – Christian.

So we have routed out some more Christian heresy.

1Faith1Hope

Another term is Messianic Jew if you prefer. No heresy. As my grandmother would say “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”

Amos Moses

No, God comes into the person through the hearing of the word. Just as Paul said, sometimes the ground is fertile, sometimes it is rocky and barren. It is not a choice we make, it is Gods choice whether to save or not save.

Amos Moses

Ephesians
1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

1:5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

1:6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

he hath chosen us BEFORE the foundation of the world…………..Having Predestinated Us …

1Faith1Hope

He chose us to love us and Jesus came to pay our sin debt. We are predestined to be loved by Him. He holds out the gift; all we need to do is accept it. How much simpler could it be? Again, as a Calvinist, you need to learn about the life Calvin led. Once your eyes are opened, you will see things much differently.

Amos Moses

Did you choose to be born? No. Sorry, you have as much choice in being born as you have in being born again.

1Faith1Hope

Then why are you even on this thread, Amos, arguing with everyone? If everything is already a done deal – why are you wasting everyone’s time? I think you just like to argue.

Amos Moses

We are, as you pointed out so well, to be His agent of the Great Commission, to bring His word to every ear, to bring Him to every ear.

Also, there are many who follow a false christ, a christ of their own making, not the Christ of the bible. If our theology is wrong, if our Christology is wrong, if our soteriology is wrong then we are not following the true Christ, we are following an antichrist, a false christ, a christ of our own making and we are not truly saved.

The only time being wasted are those who are following a false christ.

afchief

So this is the pre-destination theory? Right? Why do we witness to people then Amos?

Yes, your theology is weird!

Amos Moses

No this is scripture. Provide me with even ONE scripture that says we are capable of choosing God. Just one…………….

I’ll wait………………………………………………………………………………………………

afchief

Romans 1:19 (NASB) because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

If God has made Himself evident within us, then we are capable of choosing God.

Amos Moses

No, we are only capable of rejecting God outside of Christ. Romans 3:10-23. No one is righteous, no NOT ONE. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

NONE!

God made Himself evident so that all would know that God exists, except those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. But NONE choose the things of God outside of Christ. The scripture is above.

afchief

Amos, stop with this pre-destination theory garbage. It is dumb and makes absolutely no sense.

Would it make you feel better if I say you are right?

Amos Moses

So, God has no power, authority, sovereignty to save us? It is all us and not Him? Really? Because that is what you are saying. That is a very low view of God and a very high view of self.

No. Sorry. You can call it whatever you want. It is scriptural. Christ is the good shepherd. He will leave the entire flock to find the one lost sheep. The lost sheep is NOT going to find his way home by itself. It is NOT CAPABLE.

WE are the lost sheep. Without Christ, we are never going to get where we belong. Your false beliefs to the contrary.

Look, i believe you are saved. i think it is about Christ, you think it is about YOU. So who is at the center of your salvation, YOU or CHRIST? Do you see how bassackwards that is?

1Faith1Hope

I’ll give you ONE – of many!!! John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” So, as a Calvinist, you would say that the believing part is a “work” right? Since, according to you and Calvin, we are dead and can do nothing.

Amos Moses

Very good scripture, but not on point. It has absolutely nothing to do, in context, with whether we choose Christ.

Believing is a work, of Christ, and not our own. It is all Christs work. If we can work for our salvation, then Christ is not needed. If it is up to us, then we are robbing, or trying to rob, Christ of His glory. He will not share His glory with another, no one, not even us.

Sola Christi, By Christ ALONE.

“Since, according to you and Calvin, we are dead and can do nothing.”

No, according to scripture. We can do plenty, but we do not choose the things of God. Men love the darkness, and if you would just read scripture a little further than the one you gave me, to John 3:16-21, you would see……

3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

Reading it IN CONTEXT, and not trying to proof text, taking it out of context, changes the meaning entirely.

Romans
3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
3:12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
3:13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
3:14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
3:15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:
3:16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:
3:17 And the way of peace have they not known:
3:18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.
3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
3:22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

We have to be given the righteousness of Christ, by Christ, or yes, we are incapable of choosing Him.

1Faith1Hope

It is weird – and satanic. It is Calvinism. And he is steeped in it.

Amos Moses

That turns Christs work into our work. That is a works based salvation. That is against scripture. It is false.

afchief

No it is not. Jesus died for everyone who would walk this earth. It is up to us to accept that sacrifice.

Romans 10:9-10 (NASB) that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

Amos Moses

“Jesus died for everyone who would walk this earth. It is up to us to accept that sacrifice.”

No. If it is up to us to accept, then that is OUR work and not Christs and you are nullifying His death. If we could just choose God, and Christ is God, then there was absolutely NO NEED for Him to come and be with us and die on the cross. We could all just “choose” to go to heaven.

WE DO NOT!

1Faith1Hope

This is Calvinism. This is error. This is not Biblical. Of course God gives us free will and wants us to choose Him. Educate yourself on the wicked, satanic life Calvin led and you will be horrified to think you ever followed his teachings. I just prayed that you will do so.

Amos Moses

This is scripture. If you can prove it to not be scripture then do so. Otherwise you are in error.

Amos Moses

Show me one scripture that says we have a choice and it is up to us to choose Christ. That is a works salvation.

afchief

No it is not!! Here we go again Amos. We are playing with semantics. You did the same thing on Charisma.

Amos Moses

So you do not want to lose again. Got it. Scripture defines theology or otherwise you only have the traditions of men and false religion.

Have fun with that.

Amos Moses

Eph 2:1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;

Col 2:13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;

We were quicken, regenerated, brought back to life, by Him and ONLY Him. Not by our choice, but by His. We are quickened with the word of God, listening to those words, He enters into us to do His work in us.

The five solas:

Sola Fide, by faith alone.

Sola Scriptura, by Scripture alone.

Solus Christus, through Christ alone.

Sola Gratia, by grace alone.

Soli Deo Gloria, glory to God alone.

afchief

Bye Amos, we had this argument a long time ago on Charisma. I will not get into it with you again.

How can anyone claim that the Christian god is “loving”? He is a psychopath. The Old Testament shows him to be a mass murderer and an apologist for slavery, genocide and rape, while the New Testament shows him to be a vindictive torturer.

afchief

Jesus went to the Cross just for you. Why? Because He loves you. He did not have to die for you. But because of His love for you He was glad to.

John N

No, that complex body I live in, developped in just nine months, starting from one cel and one sperm.

I don’t know about yours, but I’m pretty sure your god was not around when it all happened to mine.

Bob Johnson

I can have a belief in something, say, “Justice.” And yet have no clear cut idea what a just solution is to many a legal problem. I can live a life in which I see many injustices and continue to hold my irrational belief, yet it is, for me, a “real belief.”

softengine

If I tell you that a tornado just touched down 2 blocks away, am I threatening you or warning you? I think, in America at least, our weak(ening) vocabularies are producing a disconnect with definition. Not sure how we fix that….We’ve lost a lot of the nuance of language as well.

If damnation were merely an accident, you might have a point. But it’s not. Damnation is a punishment, and when Christians talk about it to non-Christians, it’s a threat. It’s a stupid threat, because we all know it’s fake, but the Christians think it’s real, so it’s still a threat.

Amos Moses

Damnation is not a threat, it is a reality. When the magistrate tells you that if you keep robbing people, three strikes will come in and you will be jailed for life. Is that a threat, or the truth, or both? Does it matter?

Sorry, it is not either or, it is the truth of the situation and if you choose to ignore the magistrate and continue to rob, guess what? You are going to jail for whatever you stole, and the magistrate has no choice in the matter if he is to be known as credible. You were fairly warned and you have no excuse.

God has done that for you, and when it comes time to meet Him, you will have no excuse. Saying “I did not believe it” is not going to mean anything.

Damnation is not a reality. Your god doesn’t exist. You have been fed a lie.

Amos Moses

Do you have perfect knowledge of every thing?

Orion Jones

“Damnation is not a threat, it is a reality.”

That’s clearly an intimidation tactic, designed to scare people into believing what you believe. And Christians use this strategy on children too, which is particularly unconscionable. If someone said something so sick and perverted in the name of anything other than a religion, they would be categorised as a psychopath.

Amos Moses

“That’s clearly an intimidation tactic, designed to scare people into believing what you believe. ”

It is used in everyday life by the legal system. Three strikes can put a person in jail for life in certain states. A third strike could be that someone stole a DVD for their daughters birthday. So what? They stole, more than three times, they are caught and the law, which is for the protection of all, uses the threat of penalty to gain compliance. They have been told everyone the penalty. They have no excuse.

What is your excuse? We have no excuse. We have been told the penalty. Does the law apply to all, men, women AND children. It absolutely does.

No, your response seems to be that this law, Gods law, does not apply to you.

Against children or individual atheists within your own family or local community the intimidation tactic of eternal hell-fire and torture might be effective. But atheists on an anonymous global forum are immune to this, and you’ll simply be met with the scorn and ridicule you deserve. Atheists fear damnation from your god no more than they fear bad karma from their previous lives under Hinduism.

Amos Moses

” There’s no evidence hell exists. Therefore it’s intimidation.”

Intimidation has nothing to do with the existence of a thing. Force or the threat of force is intimidation whether it is real or not. Your thinking is futile. FYI, we have hell on earth right now, so your assumptions are again futile.

Nikola Tasev

“Intimidation has nothing to do with the existence of a thing.”
If a danger exists then stating it could be a warning. If it does not exist, it cannot be a fair warning, it can only be scaremongering or intimidation.
“FYI, we have hell on earth right now, so your assumptions are again futile.”
If you consider life on earth to be hell, being in hell has little relation to anyone being Christian or not. So your religion is futile.

Amos Moses

Do you have perfect knowledge of everything?

Nikola Tasev

No. That’s why I keep an open mind, so if I am given evidence and shown wrong I can change my mind.
Religion, on the other hand, pretends to offer perfect final answers, but presents no evidence. And neither have you presented any credible evidence.

Amos Moses

“No,”

Good, we agree. And no you are not keeping an open mind, your mind is closed. To the truth.

You have absolutely no means whatsoever to make a statement as you did because you do not know certain things, in fact the volumes of what we do not know is unfathomable.

You have no basis in truth to say anything does not exist, much less God. The only way for you to be able to make that statement with any possible veracity is to be as God. But then you would be God and your statement again would have absolutely no veracity.

Nikola Tasev

I don’t need perfect knowledge to notice and correct false statements such as “Intimidation has nothing to do with the existence of a thing.”.
And I don’t need perfect knowledge to reject scripture that regulates but does not oppose slavery. If your God wrote how women should remain silent in churches and not use mixed fabrics, but did not consider slavery important enough to ban, then it is not a God I consider worthy of worship, existing or not.

Amos Moses

“I don’t need perfect knowledge to notice and correct false statements such as “Intimidation has nothing to do with the existence of a thing.”.”

You cannot even recognize your own logical fallacies and false statements but we are to accept your faulty pontificates on the existence of God?

i don’t think so.

Orion Jones

“Intimidation has nothing to do with the existence of a thing”

It does for something like hell (or a tornado, as in the example above). If it did genuinely exist, someone telling you of that would be warning you. If they don’t know it exists, it’s blatant intimidation.

“Force or the threat of force is intimidation whether it is real or not.”

So you agree Christians use intimidation tactics to make others believe what they believe. Thanks for clearing that up.

Do you believe Ghandi is in hell?

Orion Jones

“If I tell you that a tornado just touched down 2 blocks away, am I threatening you or warning you?”

If there’s a real tornado, then it’s a warning. If there’s not a tornado, then it’s just threatening language.

Gerald Moore

I’ve never read anything from “Thessalonians,” but that sounds really nasty.

God says you have to choose to believe. Something that seems undoable. If I threatened you with torture to believe in Bigfoot, you might say you believe, but if you didn’t already believe in Bigfoot would you really be able to choose to believe?

L Turner

I have been an avowed atheist for the last decade, but I have known since I was four that the supernatural friend or “cre-a-tore” wasn’t real. Growing up in a religious environment was tough, especially when there are veiled, and not so veiled, threats if you dared question silly nonsense. I live in the bible belt and it is extremely difficult being bombarded with religious rants daily. So yeah, it is difficult to escape god, as much as I would love to do so. There are stunning parallels between adhering to religious beliefs and staying in an abusive relationship of any kind… the obedience and threats if you choose to leave. Even as a child I was alarmed that humans were referred to as wretches, worms and sheep (flock) in gospel hymns and sermons. So glad that I’m out of that mess.

afchief

Ohh but He is real! Because what you see around you, i.e. people, nature, the stars and sun clearly testifies that there is a creator.

Romans 1:18-20 (NASB) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

What I see around me, i.e. people, nature, the stars and sun, only testifies that there are people, nature, the stars and sun. If I want to know how those things got to be here, I look for evidence, and the evidence shows that these things got here by natural processes.

afchief

Show me evidence of how life started from non-life?

Waiting………………………………………………………………………….

Kyle Everett

You’ll be waiting a long time considering nobody knows the answer (yet).

However the point you’re trying to make is irrelevant. Just because we don’t know the origin of life doesn’t in any way, shape or form logically lead us to conclude an advanced, omnipotent creator deity is the cause.

What evidence we do have all points towards the fact that life has evolved from extremely simple, molecular organisms to the advanced forms of life we see today. It makes sense to conclude that somewhere in Earth’s history (either as a result of a foreign object entering Earth from space containing the needed biological elements or through a chemical reaction that occurred between the basic elements already existing on Earth thanks to its life-supporting conditions) that very simple life arose which over billions of years evolved and to this day continues to evolve.

Again, this is all irrelevant because however life arose we can safely say that there is no absolutely reason for us to logically conclude that an omnipotent deity made the world simply because we exist. There are many, many ways life could have arisen on Earth.

afchief

Irrelevant?!?!?!? Ahhhhhh, I see the blind faith (religion) that somehow life started from non-life. We just believe it happened. We don’t have proof yet. But we will!! Then how do you prove that life evolved?!?!?!?

LOL!

John N

So you are claiming that life did not start from non-life, afchief?

Congratulations. You have just debunked Genesis 1 & 2.

And you know, if one part of the bible is false, that must mean the whole thing ….

But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.

afchief

Silly homo!! God is life!!! He is the one who created all things!!!!

Colossians 1:16 (NASB) For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

John N

God is life? Now I thought he was supposed to be spiritual, and thus immaterial. I must be mistaken. My apologies.

So he is life. But since you clearly showed life can not start from non-life, he or she must have been created. Then who created your god? A supergod? Turtles all the way down?

afchief

He has no beginning. His name is “I am”

John N

Well, that settles the case then. If your god doesn’t need a beginning, neither does the universe or life itself needs a beginning.

Therefore your creator – whatever you call him – is not needed – what has no beginning doesn’t need a cause.

bowie1

My parents were not abusive when it came to faith and while my father wasn’t well spoken he sometimes said a few words after reading some scripture before praying at the end of a meal. I think how it is presented to us can make all the difference on how we respond when we grow up. It should also not just be left to the church to teach but it must be the parents first who do so. I think the hymns and sermons were meant as agreeing we need to be humble or modest and not conceited. The message needs to be balanced. My dad thought at one time a fire and brimstone sermon by an old fashioned Baptist preacher went a bit over the top, but most of the time we attended a Christian Reformed Church, a smaller protestant North American denomination, of around 300,000 or so members.

L Turner

I was raised in a loving family as well, and they did their best to be good parents. So many people believe that their values and ethics are derived from religious beliefs and that is so untrue. Recently, one illustrious christian made the comment that our society disintegrates if the word God is removed from our currency. Well, if you believe moral values are based on words written on unsanitary currency and the absence of said word is going to make or break you, you have some really big unresolved issues. Bottom line, science and reason fly people to the moon…religion flies people into buildings.

George

problem is though, if a person only believes they are nothing more than an animal, risen out of protoplasmic soup, it can also lead to the attitude, “why bother with any rules?” as long as you don’t get caught, why not try and cheat on your taxes? watch some porn? tell someone to get f*&ked if they annoy you? lie your way out of problems?
As a Christian, I strive to do things right because I have a healthy fear of God. Im far from perfect and im not saying that all atheists will have the aforementioned traits above. But having been a non believer half my life, I always thought myself a good guy, but I cheated on my taxes, watched porn, considered an affair (as long as you don’t get caught eh?) lied to people without a hinch of guilt. But now, I cant do those things without conviction, and my life has never been better. And fear of God to me is a good thing.

John N

Well, as an atheist, I strive to do the things right without the need of a big brother watching over me, and without the fear of eternal punishment in case I would do something not to his liking

And since the most secular countries in the world are also among the least violent,I guess this works very well. I guess empathy is a stronger force than fear.

Frank Dorka

Thumb(s) up!

George

can I ask then, do you feel comfortable about watching porn, lusting in your heart, lying to people for convenience, hating people when they annoy you, etc? it would be convenient to wish there was no God. That’s one major reason for people hating God, they hate authority over themselves, they want to be their own god.
Again, a healthy fear of God has helped me to forgive people, be honest, etc. what can be wrong with that?
Also, re secular societies, some of the worst atrocities happened under communist countries/regimes (not denying none happened under Christendom ) and atheistic rulers (pot, mao, stalin, lenin, hitler etc)

Bob Johnson

So the only reason you do good is out of fear of punishment. What a sad thought.

Angel Jabbins

Absolutely not! Christians are motivated to do good out of love for God who sent His Son to die so our sins could be forgiven and washed away. There is no fear of punishment for the Christian. I am free to love God and live my life in a way that pleases Him and it gives me great joy to do so and I look forward to an eternity with Him someday. When your sins have been washed away by the Savior, there is no longer fear of punishment. Jesus took my punishment Himself. If you reject Him and His free gift of salvation, then, yes, you do have reason to fear. God is love, but He is also a just God will punish those who reject His Son.

Bob Johnson

You make my point. “take my free gift or burn in hell.”

Angel Jabbins

Sad you would view it that way, Bob, but what did I expect from one who loves his sin so much he does not want to give it up. Your choice, Bob.

George

not at all. God to me is like a loving father who wants my good, and disciplines me if he has to, which again, contributes to my eventual benefit. So i both love him and respect him for his love and authority.

When I was living for myself, yes, I did what I wanted, but I was very empty inside and unhappy by many of my choices. nothing satisfied. That’s why now this bible verse makes all the more sense to me now – “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding” (psalm 111:10)

You’ve seen how spoilt brats act, when they don’t have any boundaries and don’t respect authority…..

John N

What can be wrong with that?

If the only reason you behave like a reasonable human being is because of fear of a mythical deity, I hope nobody is in your neighbourhood when you start losing your faith.

George

again, its a privilege for me to love and walk with God, i have been forgiven of ALL my sins, past, present and future, so my eternal destiny is secure.

as for your reply “What can be wrong with that?” it shows how your beliefs on porn, lust etc are just your subjective thoughts. But the problem for you is that morals are objective. The same God who said it is wrong to steal, murder,lie etc is the same God who also taught that lusting in your heart for another woman/man is fornication/adultery, hating someone is the same as murdering the person.

It also shows that those who reject God and his gift of forgiveness through christ love their sins and justify sinful behaviour just as romans chapter 1 clearly teaches.

John N

Do you mean the same god that killed all of Egypts’ newborns after hardening the Pharao’s heart? The same one that ordered his favorite people to kill all Midianite male child and non-virginal woman, allowing them to rape all the virgin ones? The same god that condones and promotes slavery and discrimination of women? The one that ordered Abraham to kill his son as a burnt offering? The same god that requires from you to stone your son if he is stubborn and rebellious?

Some fine model of ‘objective’ morality you worship there.

And you are surprised atheist don’t agree your god is really about all loving and forgiving?

George

Yes, the same God who gave us his son Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for our sins. Your understanding of the old testament is tainted by a lack of understanding the context and the culture of its day. Abraham did not kill his son in the end. As for the Israelites, God was preserving them from heathen nations that were sacrificing their own babies (do you condemn them for that?)from attacking attacking Israel.
Bit like islamic terrorists, whats wrong with wiping them out? isn’t it right we rid the world of these extremists? That’s what God did with pagan nations that were threatening Israel. Or, should we just ‘love’ everyone? even isis?
Oh, if your so against the killing of innocents, surely you would detest the mass murder of babies (abortion), would you not? that’s at the hands of your ‘secular’ beliefs. do you condemn modern man without his god for those crimes? or, do you just hate the thought of a Holy God that will you hold you accountable one day?

John N

Tainted by a lack of understanding of the context and culture?

What is there to understand that your god supposedly ordered the Israelites to kill all the non-virgin woman and children of their enemies and rape the virgins for whatever reason? Do you think it was morally acceptable at that time? Do you think it still is?

Abraham did not kill his son, but was certainly willing to. Do you think it was morally acceptable at that time to put your children on a stake and threat to cut their throat? Do you think it still is?

But it seems you think it is morally acceptable to ‘wipe’ people out, for showing extremist behaviour. So long for the Christian love and forgiveness.

And is abortion a result of secular ‘belief’? Is it? Then why do Christians in the US have as many abortions per capita as non-Christians?

Do I hate the thought of a Holy God that will you hold me accountable one day? That would be a silly thing to do. I neither hate the thought of Odin, Baal, Zeus or the Purple Pumpkin holding me accountable one day. They can not all exist. But they certainly can all not exist.

George

didn’t you read my previous reply? I explained the context of his judgements. He who creates life has the right to take it. Also, he is your God as well, he created you. Again, what is your justification for abortion if your against the killing of innocents? more babies have been killed at the hand of man than those killed by God. don’t dodge the question. And here, read this, this is the real reason you reject the gospel –

“18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools” (romans 1:18-22)

John N

He who creates life has the right to take it? Now if that is not a justification for abortion, I don’t know what is. You really believe that?

I do realize, George, that more babies have been killed by the hand of man than by the hand of your god, the most obvious reason being your god is a myth. And I do realize a whole tot of them have been killed in the name of your god. We don’t accept that anymore, which shows that absolute, unchanging and objective morality is nonsense.

And please stop trying to explain why atheists ‘reject’ your god. Christians tend do do that a lot, you know. They simply don’t seem to understand that not believing in a god is also an option. It makes you look really silly.

George

whats your proof that God is a myth? you’ve scaled the ends of the universe and found out?

John N

Well, since no one has ever been able to find any evidence your god – or any god – exists, and no gods are needed to explain reality, we could as well consider them myths. Occam’s razor, you know.

I’m prepared to change my mind when evidence might pop up though.

George

Evidence is all around you! where do you think we came from! a magicians hat? science can never explain the origin of life, the fine tuning of this planet, the organized complexity of dna and even a simple cell packed with so much intelligent information. Not to mention the bible’s reliability when it comes to archaeological findings corroborating the places, people’s, customs etc mentioned in scripture. Jesus Christ death and resurrection are historical fact, even secular scholars concede to the empty tomb dilemma, not to mention there would be no church if it weren’t for the empty tomb and Jesus resurrection appearances!
Also, how do you explain my testimony and thousands of others who testify that weve been changed, that we know God through his son by faith, have seen prayers answered etc. Are we all mad?

John N

>’science can never explain the origin of life, the …’

So all your ‘scientific’ arguments boil down to ignorance: you do not understand it, therefore goddidit.

Luckily we have scientists able to explain how cels and DNA evolved, and are hard working to explain the origins of life. And guess what, no magician, aka god, needed.

Concerning the archeology findings corroborating the bible, I do not discuss the bible exists, nor that it has been written by human writers, mentionning real people living in ancient times in real places. I do not see how that would prove your god exists.

Jesus Christ death and resurrection are historical fact? Then it should not be diificult to show us some evidence of his life, dead and ressurrection, including the part about the ressurrection of all the dead saints. And I mean evidence outside the bible, which can not be considered an objective source in this, and is even not consistent about the ‘facts’. After all, such an event would have made the news even in those times wouldn’t it?

Personal testimonies and ‘answered prayers’ can be more easily explained in lots of other ways than by divine intervention. Random luck, wishfull thinking, blind faith, delusion, lying, … all are known to exist. Madness is not necessary.

George

” Random luck, wishfull thinking, blind faith, delusion, lying ”

funny, they’re all the things you can attribute to evolutionary science. Chance is your god isn’t it? you would also believe that if a tornado went through a junk yard, a jet airplane could pop out by chance.

Again, you would have to confess that you would have to believe the jet airplane scenario as plausible if you believe chance brought a fine tuned planet with oceans of water, a moon that helps with tides and the axis of the earth, a sun which is at the exact distance from the earth, gravity at the razors edge, seasons and oxygen which are conducive to life ( only on our planet mind you) livestock, vegetation, plantation etc and the list goes on and on. now that’s what I call-

“Random luck, wishfull thinking, blind faith, delusion, lying”!! if you think this came about on its own!
(you spelt wishful wrong by the way, could you also be wrong about your theory of the earth?)

John N

Let’s see – you’ve got some of the finest creationists arguments here. Long time refuted of course, but I guess you didn’t notice that.

As first chance. No, chance is not my god. Chance is only a part of the story – essential, but not enough. Chance – mutations, genetic drift, recombination – provides the variation that natural selection can work with. And natural selection is not random at all.

And there is the ‘finetuning’-argument. Which essentially boils down to ‘if circumstances would have been different, things would have been different’. Now there are billions of planets in our universe that will never develop life, because one or more physical constraint is not within acceptable margins. There is at least one planet where all these parameters are within the margins that allow life to exist, for a small part of it and for the time being. Finetuning? No, just probability. It had to happen somewhere.

By the way, the presence of oxygen is a result of life, not a prerequisite. The earth has no ‘exact’ distance to the sun – the difference between the closest and farthest point being 5 million kilometers. And of course the earths’ gravity is not at ‘razors edge’ – with a difference of around 0.050 m/s² between the equator and the poles.

George

have you in your lifetime ever seen something, appear from nothing? lets take a more simple example, would you believe that the faces on mt rushmore could happen by chance, if given millions of years, corrosion, rain, etc ?
Cause that’s what all you non theists have to confess you believe. Just answer me that question. (love how you play down the amazing fact that our world is incredibly fine tuned, and with the information even in a simple cell, it requires intelligence, you guys honestly throw your brains out the window, all because you hate the thought of a Holy creator God who will keep you accountable, so you go round in circular arguments, trying to find any other explanation other than God)

George

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being” Sir Isaac Newton

“I want to know how God created this world” Albert Einstein

“Science is the glimpse of Gods purpose in nature. The very existence of the amazing world of the atom and radiation points to a purposeful creation, to the idea that there is a God and an intelligent purpose back of everything…an orderly universe testifies to the greatest statement ever uttered: “In the beginning God” Arthur H. Compton (winner of the Nobel prize in physics)

Cady555

Sin is an offense against god.

Something is wrong when it harms another person.

Some things, like stealing, meet both definitions.

Some things, like gathering firewood on a Saturday, are sins but are not wrong.

Some things, like rape, slavery, marrying children and beating rebellious children to death, are wrong but are not condemned by the Bible.

Since I don’t believe god exists, I don’t worry about offending him. I am quite able to.figure out right and wrong without guidance from ancient goat herders.

Some religious leaders say over and over that atheists just want to rebel. They need to keep christians too afraid to think it through. It simply is not true

Cady555

I don’t need god to be moral. In fact, the realization that this life is all I have makes me kinder and more compassionate.

TheKingOfRhye

“I cheated on my taxes, watched porn, considered an affair (as long as
you don’t get caught eh?) lied to people without a hinch of guilt”

Okay…..cheating on taxes, yeah that’s bad. Lying to people, not good either. Considered an affair? Is merely considering something a sin? If so, I think most of us (Christian or otherwise) have considered some pretty evil things at one time or another. The question is if you act on it, isn’t it?

Watching porn? Sorry, doesn’t even belong on that list at all. 😉

George

my point is to show how blind we really are and how desperately we need Christ. The bible clearly teaches that we are born sinners, and we constantly justify our sinful behaviour because we enjoy too much. Yes Jesus said that even if a man looks at a woman with lust they’ve committed adultery in the heart.
Watching porn is exactly that. Its taking what God created to be enjoyed between a husband and wife, and its been used in a perverted way to satiate our sinful desires. Would you like having sex with your loved one while people are spying in through your window watching?
Rejecting the saving mercy of Christ is done at your own peril. The bible says “it is appointed that man should die once and then face judgement”
You wouldn’t want to find that out on the other side of this life and realize its too late.

TheKingOfRhye

“Would you like having sex with your loved one while people are spying in through your window watching?”

Not me, but there are people who are into that sort of thing, you know…..

bowie1

A fellow believer who made his public profession of his Christian faith mentioned 25 years later when interviewed in our denominational magazine along with myself and two other people that he had become agnostic due to some questions about origins. The thing is people have to decide which they are going to believe – the bible – or some theories that scientists have about our origins. Unfortunately some put more faith in so-called science than in God’s revealed Word. We can serve only one Master as you can see, and the chips will fall where they may.

Emmanuel

He keeps knocking because he knows you will answer. he wants to visit with you But, you want to do you and he’s a burden to you now. Good luck and open the door before it’s too late.

He is a myth. There is no “too late”. A real god wouldn’t put a time limit on belief. That’s what the cultists of a false god would do.

Emmanuel

How about the “time limit” of life? So what does your myth tell you about after death?

Frank Dorka

My myth tells me that my body will decompose and some might remember my personality and good works. Does yours include wings and a harp?

Emmanuel

John 3:16- eternal life in the presence of God (for me)
What happens to your soul, according to your myth?

Frank Dorka

Do you mean to tell me that someone has found proof of a soul? Real evidence? Not just hearsay? Maybe, I’ll become a believer. Please forward me and I will reconsider.

shepherd

You have to become one first!

Frank Dorka

Asinine.

Chrissy Vee

Amen!

Emmanuel

I did some research because you challenged me and I thank you for that. I read and read and I found no scientific proof that a soul exists. There were personal testimonies and experiences but that’s not real science. But in my readings, I came across a discussion point that made me think some more. Science prove a soul like they can’t prove love. Now, I’m not saying atheists don’t love, I’m sure you love your spouse, kids and friends. The question was if science can’t prove a soul or love, does it exist? so if something that can’t be proven, does it exist? Again, my point is that. Something that can’t be touched or measured, does it exist?

Bob Johnson

Science can not prove a soul exists. In fact science “proves” nothing, it can only disprove hypothesises. And while research can find scant scientific evidence to disprove the soul; it can also find scant evidence to disprove many things.

So now we must search the philosophical and theological literature concerning the soul. When does it come into existence? And by what means? Who gets a soul – plants? animals? humans? all humans? Can souls be destroyed? As the population grows is there any limit to the number of souls?

Many posters here believe a soul enters the body at conception, does the still born go to heaven, hell, purgatory? Does your soul go immediately to the afterlife or wait somewhere until Judgment Day when we all be judged? There are many questions to yet be answered and if you follow an unpopular answer you will be labeled a heretic and possible burned on a stake.

Emmanuel

The answer comes when you lay down to rest for the last time. But, your actions (sin), no belief in God or worship in God will determine where that soul goes. We have to wait and see. But, the Bible gives some good references if you want to believe. Lazarus and the rich man story comes to mind.

shepherd

All those questions can only be answered from a theology stand point . 1 conception. 2 God breathe into us 3 all humans. 4 God can destroy the soul , after all He created it. The soul that sins shall die. 5 The ‘limit ‘ will be when the end comes. In The Revelation of Jesus, John “saw a great multitude that no man could number ” A. To heaven because of the state innocence (is not able to commit any sin). B Depending on the life the individual lived. Jesus told the thief that he would be with Him in paradise. Jesus told a parable about , the poor righteous (Lazarus) died and went to heaven and the rich man died and went to hell.

Frank Dorka

What do YOU think a soul is? I can tell you what I think love is. It’s the way I feel when I look at my wife of 41 years while she sleeps. It’s the concern I have for my two daughters and their children’s welfare. It’s the way I felt loss when my parents died. I know what I think love is, but I have no idea what a soul is. Tell me.

Emmanuel

I think the soul is the living spirit inside of us. Our bodies are made up of three persons; physical, mental and spiritual. We work out for our physical, education for our mental and we worship for our spiritual strength. To be a complete person, we need to work on all three. When we neglect one, that one part atrophies and becomes weak. Our soul needs to worship God or whatever you want. I’m reminded of a bible verses; Worship Christ in spirit and in truth. Christ promised the holy spirit to lead us to the truth and to guide us. To provide us with spiritual fruits and gifts. To see God, we have to be spiritually strong and in one accord with Him spiritually.
As for Love, I feel the same as you. When I see my kids, nothing like it. But, how much love is inside of me in milliliters or in grams? how much love do you carry (in ounces)?
Why does love get a pass and not a soul if both can’t be measured?

Bob Johnson

“I think the soul is the living spirit inside of us. Our bodies are made up of three persons; physical, mental and spiritual.”

You realize this view is not Christian theology, but is derived from Origen, a heretic?

Emmanuel

Follow me here:
We believe that we are created in His image. We also believe in the trinity or God one in Three; father, son and holy spirit. So based on the above statements, we are body (jesus), mind (god) and spirit ( holy spirit). We are made in the image of God. I can give scriptures but it sounds like you know the Bible.
I hope I explained it right in such a short paragraph.
I love God for making me in His image. I can see, hear and feel him because I am his creation.
I love a man that does not exist with a soul that does not exist. LOL

shepherd

Wrong . First evidence of that is found in bible. Genesis 2:7 ” And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground , and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul” kjv.

JGC

In Gen 2:7 the Hebrew word rendered as ‘soul’ in the KJV is ‘nephesh’. It’s actual meaning is ‘breathing being’, ‘living being’ or ‘mortal being’. In fact, translations of Gen 2:7 in other versions than the KJV render it as ‘living being’ about 70% of the time.

The word “nephesh’ is used in Torah about 750 times, and it’s use is not restricted to humans: it’s also used to refer to both living animals other than man. Perhaps the most striking example is in Gen 2:19 which describes Adam naming the beasts god has created. “And whatsoever Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof”. The word rendered here as ‘living creature’ is ‘nephesh’.

shepherd

Love is that good act of care and concern coupling with your emotions that is directed towards someone or something of your choice . Your soul is the ‘ real you’ that is ‘cloth’ in the flesh. When one dies the soul is released from the body and lives on. God is greatly concerned about where the soul lives when the body dies, heaven or hell. The bible tell us that ” The soul that sins (disobey God) shall die. That death is everlasting separation from God ( which is the second death), in a place of fire and torment , Matthew 25: 41, 46; Revelation 20.

Atheists don’t have myths, because we don’t need them. No one – not even you – knows what happens after death, but most likely, our consciousness stops because there’s no brain activity. Atheists aren’t afraid of that. Christians are, which is why they make up baseless beliefs in an immortal soul and an afterlife.

Bob Johnson

But oddly no pre-life as they do not believe in reincarnation or an existence before conception.

shepherd

Since you are not afraid of, I would like to believe you don’t go to the Doctor when you are sick. You the real you , that spirit is afraid to die because you fear that you are wrong about life after the body is dead. We go to the Doctor to preserve life so that we are to continue these discussions. We are not afraid because we have faith that we will have eternal life .

Ryan McCullough

What is the soul that you speak of? Do you have any evidence of soul (music genres & Korea aside)

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

Perhaps the discovery of multiple dimensions will reveal something in the future.

Emmanuel

Any proof that you love?

Jeff

Dom Saunders looks like a burnt match with aids.

Amos Moses

“He is a myth.”

Do you have absolute knowledge of every thing?

Kyle Everett

No but the knowledge we do have tells us this:

1) The bible is a man-made text.
2) The bible offers not objective, empirical evidence or reason as to why a sane, reasonable person should consider the things written in it to be authoritative.

Unless one or both of the above can be shown to be otherwise, then the Christian God is absolutely a myth. He is no more real than the hundreds of past and present religious deities mankind has created. God is an unproven myth, believing he is real with all your heart doesn’t change that.

Amos Moses

No……. So we agree.

The rest is of what you say of no concern.

You have absolutely no means whatsoever to make a statement as you did because you do no know certain things, in fact the volumes of what we do not know is unfathomable.

You have no basis in truth to say anything does not exist, much less God. The only way for you to be able to make that statement with any possible veracity is to be as God. But then you would be God and you statement again would have absolutely no veracity.

You can’t disprove a negative. Do you have absolute knowledge that unicorns don’t exist? No, of course you don’t, because you don’t have absolute knowledge. Then why don’t you believe in unicorns? Or elves, or leprechauns, or dragons?

The rest of what he said explains that very point, so perhaps you shouldn’t be so dismissive. Strawman arguments get no one anywhere.

Amos Moses

i gave you no negative to prove. Your assertion is groundless. i gave you the absurdity of your own reasoning. You do not have perfect knowledge so you therefore cannot know for any certainty that God does not exist. Period. You have no veracity.

i did not say they did, although they are mentioned in the bible and you seem to know about them.

But your thinking is futile and i cannot trust what you say.

Cady555

And since you cannot prove unicorns do not exist, I hereby demand that you worship unicorns and give 10% of your income to the people in charge of unicorn ministries.

And since you cannot prove leprechauns do not exist, I hereby demand that you worship leprechauns and give 10% of your income to the people in charge of leprechaun ministries.

And since you cannot prove dragons do not exist, I hereby demand that you worship dragons and give 10% of your income to the people in charge of dragon ministries.

And since you cannot prove magic floating teapots do not exist, I hereby demand that you worship magic floating teapots and give 10% of your income to the people in charge of magic floating teapot ministries.

etc. etc. etc.

Or maybe we can expect that those making a positive claim for the existence of a magical creature provide some evidence.

I have an old book that proves their existence. It says right in its holy pages that they’re real, and that they love us.

But you’ll go to hell and be tortured forever if you don’t accept their love.

Cady555

That certainly settles it. Thank you! Please, now may I make the unicorn happy by giving you lots of money?

Ryan McCullough

Absurdity is in the eye of the beholder.
Perfection is an idea not a reality.

shepherd

Mr. Core, the proof is overwhelming. But too many people ignore the evidence that exist . Paul talk about people like that in Romans 1:18 to end.

Ryan McCullough

Jesus is Lord!
The Lord is a baby murderer (1 samuel 15)
Ergo Jesus is a baby murderer.
I do not worship baby murderers.
Why do you worship a baby murderer?

afchief

You are taking the Word out of context. And you have no understanding of God. God dealt with sin relatively fast in the OT. And yes, God would take life that sinned. Does not the giver of life have the right to take life?

And it was NEVER God’s heart or plan to take any life. But He is a just God and dealt with sin entirely different then today. Read the entire OT and see the heart of God!!!

Ezekiel 33:11 (NASB) Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’

DrewTwoFish

I thought God was unchanging.

afchief

How God deals with sin has changed. In the OT God dealt with it then and there. In the NT, God deals with it when we leave this earth.

Hebrews 9:27 (NASB) And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment

DrewTwoFish

So he did change his mind.

afchief

How He deals with sin.

shepherd

He is! It only because of His grace and mercies through Jesus Christ , why we are dealt with the same way as in the old testament. 2 Peter 3: 9 ” The Lord is not slack concerning is promise, as some men count slackness; but is long suffering to us ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance ” kjv.

I have proof unicorns exist, I saw on the internet therefore it exists! I hear you can even buy unicorn horns on Amazon. Drops the mic!

Angel Jabbins

And believing he doesn’t exist with all your heart will not change what will happen on judgment day when you stand before Him to give an account of why you rejected the salvation He freely offer to you through the death of His Son. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. Laugh now…but a day of reckoning is coming for every person…even though you think it is a big hoot right now. One minute after you die, no more time to change your mind and eternity it a looooooooong time. Good luck to ya’.

Ryan McCullough

I choose to value the life that I’m guaranteed to have now. Nobody knows what happens after death, I suggest you learn to enjoy and value what you have now. You know what they say about one the hand is worth two in the bush!

afchief

No, we do KNOW what happens after death! For those who will not accept Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior in this life time;

Hebrews 9:27 (NASB) And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,

Nikola Tasev

How do you KNOW what happens? You read it in a book, but this book is part of your claim, not evidence for it. You have no more evidence the Bible is true than you have for Hindu or Buddhist texts.

afchief

The fact that you exist proves that there is a God. God has made Himself evident to you by what has been made i.e. mankind, animals, our planet and the universe. Which is why you are without excuse when you leave this earth.

Romans 1:18-20 (NASB) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Nikola Tasev

We have pretty good understanding how humans, animals, our planet and our universe were created. None require God. We don’t know how life originated, but nothing suggest supernatural interference.
And of course, you quote the Bible again. Which is part of the claim you make, not proof of God.

afchief

That is why it is by faith that we come to God. Hebrews 11:6 (NASB) And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

He is standing at the door of your heart and knocking. It is up to you to open that door.

Revelation 3:20-21 (NASB) Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. 21 He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

shepherd

I note you mentioned ‘created ‘ if something was created then there must have been a Creator , who we know as God . Because you and the scientific community don’t know the origin of life, you can not rule God out, because there must have been a beginning. Until they can prove different, ” In the beginning God . ……”, Genesis 1:1…

Nikola Tasev

“I note you mentioned ‘created ‘ if someone or something was created, then there must have been a Creator”
A poor choice of words from my side, and I apologize for the confusion it caused. English is my second language and I use “created” in the same way as I use “formed”, “caused” and so on.

“the dust particles must have been very intelligent to make a decision to come together on their own to form eyes, heart, skin among other things”
Organs were formed very late in the history of life, and were formed not by dist, but by cells in living, functioning and evolving life forms. Life forms, unlike dust, are subject to natural selection. There are animals without hearts or blood at all (Corals, for example), and much simpler hearts (worms), so we can examine how our own complex and efficient heart developed.

“Because you and the scientific community don’t know the origin of life, you can not rule God out, because there must have been a beginning.”
First, we may not know how life started, but we know quite well how it developed after that – including all the organs you mentioned.
Second, we are not discussing a general Creator, but the specific Biblical one. Many specific claims made by the Bible imply the Biblical God is not the cause of life’s diversity.

“Until they can prove, (solid evidence, no guess) different, ” In the beginning God . ……”, Genesis 1:1…”
Err… no. “We don’t know, therefore God” is not a solid argument. Our ignorance does not change reality in any way, is subject to change, and is not proof of anyone’s creation story. We did not know how lightnings or tides worked. Now we do. Can you see why “until they can prove different, God /Zeus throws spears at the cloud” was never a good argument?

shepherd

Do be too concern about your English, I can tell you meant exactly what you wrote . You don’t know how life began . To an independently thinking person, it is absurd to to even think that people was created and their organs were not developed, until later after the we’re walking around . Where did the life forms come from that was develop into cells, that developed into the organs of your body ?
I don’t know which book which someone claim is the bible that you have read? The diversity started at the Tower Babel in Iraq, that is how we have so many different languages.
Be the scientific community have been able to explain a few thing that seems logical, does not mean they have the absolute fact. The have been guessing on a few things. There is a planet out in space they don’t know if it is a planet. They down graded and now they are thinking of upgrading back. Job 26:7 tell us that God hang the earth on nothing . The scientific community put that bit of information out there less than 20 years ago. The book of Job, in the Bible was written over three thousand years ago . I encourage you to read the bible and get some good scientific information. Something better than not knowing the origin of life. The evidence is overwhelming. God is real, Zeus is myth.

TheKingOfRhye

“Because you and the scientific community don’t know the origin of life, you can not rule God out”

Well, okay. I can’t rule God out. I also can’t rule out Ahura Mazda, Thor, Odin, Zeus, etc, etc. Not being able to rule something out does not mean you have to believe in it.

shepherd

I agree that you don’t have to believe. The choice is yours. For those of us who believes, our lives has been changed for the better and eternity. People has been calling on all those false gods for thousands of years, but me very got an answer. The bible tell us that they are not God. They are made by people, Roman 1:18-25. The even change their gods from time to time , Jeremiah 2:11.

TheKingOfRhye

I just think that’s the worst kind of argument for God, that one can’t rule it out. It’s not even an argument for the God of the Bible in particular, really. And neither is ‘the Bible said so’, for that matter.

JGC

“The fact that you exist proves that there is a God.”

To the exact same extent the fact that we exist proves there are leprechauns. or pixies or djinn, etc. If you’re going to make a leap of faith from the fact of existence to a necessity for a supernatural entity, any supernatural entity will serve equally well.

Randy Wanat

You are defining your deity into existence.

If my deity is real, it created the universe and life.
The universe exists, and life exists.
Therefore, my deity is real.

This proves nothing except a lack of awareness of logical fallacies. Do you care if the things you believe are actually true?

afchief

The human brain consists of approximately 12 billion cells, forming 120 trillion interconnections. The light sensitive retina of the eye (which is really part of the brain) contains over 10 million photoreceptor cells. These cells capture the light pattern formed by the lens and convert it into complex electrical signals, which are then sent to a special area of the brain where they are transformed into the sensation we call vision.

In an article in _Byte_ magazine (April 1985), John Stevens compares the signal processing ability of the cells in the retina with that of the most sophisticated computer designed by man, the Cray supercomputer:

“While today’s digital hardware is extremely impressive, it is clear that the human retina’s real-time performance goes unchallenged. Actually, to simulate 10 milliseconds (one hundredth of a second) of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of 100 years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second.”

If a supercomputer is obviously the product of intelligent design, how much more obviously is the eye a product of intelligent design? And yet, evolutionists are dead certain that the human eye (and everything else in nature) came into being by pure chance and the intrinsic properties of nature! Evolutionists occasionally admit that it is difficult for even them to believe such a thing. Ernst Mayr, for example, has conceded that:

“…it is a considerable strain on one’s credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs (the eye of vertebrates, or the bird’s feather) could be improved by random mutations.” (Systematics and the Origin of Species_, p. 296).

Evolutionists rarely attempt to calculate the probability of chance occurrence in their imagined evolutionary scenarios. While there is no way to measure the probability of chance occurrence of something as complex as the eye, there are ways to calculate the probability of the chance occurrence of individual protein molecules that are essential to life. Over a thousand different kinds of proteins have been identified in the human body, and each has a unique chemical composition necessary for its own particular function.

There is a logical fallacy known as the argument from ignorance fallacy. It says that if an explanation for something is not known, one cannot simply assert one’s own idea as correct by default. In other words, our ignorance of the actual explanation is not evidence of someone’s proposed explanation.

The most common form of this fallacy is: if you can’t explain X, the explanation is God did it.

Using logical fallacies is not a valid path to truth. Do you care if the things you believe are actually true?

afchief

It is enough for me. God said it and I believe it.

Genesis 1 (NASB) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was [a]formless and void, and darkness was over the [b]surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was [c]moving over the [d]surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

6 Then God said, “Let there be [e]an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 God made the [f]expanse, and separated the waters which were below the [g]expanse from the waters which were above the [h]expanse; and it was so. 8 God called the [i]expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

9 Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout [j]vegetation, [k]plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after [l]their kind [m]with seed in them”; and it was so. 12 The earth brought forth [n]vegetation, [o]plants yielding seed after [p]their kind, and trees bearing fruit [q]with seed in them, after [r]their kind; and God saw that it was good. 13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day.

14 Then God said, “Let there be [s]lights in the [t]expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; 15 and let them be for [u]lights in the [v]expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 God made the two [w]great lights, the greater [x]light [y]to govern the day, and the lesser [z]light [aa]to govern the night; He made the stars also. 17 God placed them in the [ab]expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 and [ac]to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. 19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

20 Then God said, “Let the waters [ad]teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth [ae]in the open [af]expanse of the heavens.” 21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

24 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after [ag]their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after [ah]their kind”; and it was so. 25 God made the beasts of the earth after [ai]their kind, and the cattle after [aj]their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the [ak]sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the [al]sky and over every living thing that [am]moves on the earth.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the [an]surface of all the earth, and every tree [ao]which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the [ap]sky and to every thing that [aq]moves on the earth [ar]which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Randy Wanat

Do you care if the things you believe are actually true?

afchief

They are true. And you also know they are true. God made Himself evident to you through what has been made. That is why you will be without excuse when you stand before God.

Romans 1:18-20 (NASB) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Randy Wanat

How does one determine if claims are true, if one cares about whether one believes things that are actually true?

afchief

It is all about “Faith”. You have to believe that God is. Once I gave my life to God, He put His Spirit within me. This is how I KNOW there is a God. But first I had to see my sins. I had to come to a realization that I needed a savior. And by Faith I accepted Him into my heart and my life has been changed ever since.

Hebrews 11:6 (NASB) And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

I had a conversation with a Muslim who says that being open-minded and reading the Koran will demonstrate that the Koran is true. Essentially, have faith, and Islam will reveal its truth. You say, have faith and Christianity will reveal its truth.

You are both making mutually exclusive claims, that hinge upon application of the exact same method. If this method was effective at demonstrating truth, it should lead to the exact same results 100% of the time. As sure as 1 oxygen plus 2 hydrogen results in 1 water molecule and energy, faith should lead to the true religion. But, we know that this is not the case.

As faith is demonstrably ineffective as a method for determining truth, how should a person who wants to believe only true things determine which, if any, religion to believe?

Side note: do you apply this “just believe it’s true” method to determine truth regarding anything else in your life?

afchief

There is only ONE way to heaven and Jesus is it.

John 14:6 (NASB) Jesus *said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Randy Wanat

And, that assumes that YOUR holy book is true. The Koran says that Islam is the only way to Heaven, and all non-Muslims will go to Hell. They can’t both be true, because their claims are mutually exclusive. So, how can we determine which, if either, is actually true? Obviously, faith isn’t a good method, because the Muslim claims it will demonstrate the truth of Islam, and the Christian claims it will demonstrate the truth of Christianity. A valid method will yield the same results no matter who uses it. So, how can we figure out whether the Bible is correct, or the Koran is correct, ir if neither is correct (because it is not necessary that either one be correct)?

afchief

Did Mohammad or Allah die for our sins? There is only one God that died for all of mankind’s sins……Jesus!!!

Acts 4:12 (NASB) And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

Randy Wanat

Did Jesus ride to Heaven on the back of a winged horse with the face of a woman? No! Mohammed did, which is how we know Islam is truly the correct path. And, the Koran clearly says Jesus was merely a prophet who was never crucified, so obviously the story you believe is wrong.

Can you hold your breath for an hour and dive 1000 feet underwater? No? Then sperm whales are obviously the greatest creature on Earth.

We can take any feature that is specific to something and pretend that it somehow proves something, but it doesn’t.

Now, how can we determine if something is true? We need something more reliable than faith, which can be used to reach contradictory conclusions. And, we need something better than finding a certain special feature and proclaiming it the proof that it’s true. No, these will not do. We need something more reliable.

If I told you I was abducted by aliens and rode on their space ship, would you just believe me?

afchief

Christianity vs Islam

1.Bible tells us to never lie.
2. Koran says it ok to lie to nonbelievers. The ends justifies the means.
Koran man must do their gods work. Kill and judge the World.
3. Bible says Jesus will judge the world. It is not for man to do.
4. Bible says Christians spread the gospel with no compulsion.
5. Koran says those who do not convert can be made slaves or killed. Muslims added rape all on their own.
6. Jesus kingdom is not of this World.
7. Muslims Kingdom is of this World and Muslims must conquer it using war, lies or any other deceitful way.
8. Suicide for Christians is always a sin.
9. Suicide bombers in Islam killing innocent gets them paradise with virgins.
10. Heaven in the Bible is to be in the body of Christ and no longer sinning.
11. Paradise in the Koran is a form of hedonism were you every desire is filled.

Revelation 21:6-8 (NASB) Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. 7 He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. 8 But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

Randy Wanat

Whether you prefer something has nothing to do with whether or not it’s true. You know better than that. How can we determine if something is true? Faith is out, preference is out, and looking for things that set it apart from the rest is out. If someone makes a claim (holy books are a big bunch of claims about what happened and the nature of reality), how do we determine if the claim is actually correct?

afchief

You know there is a God by what has been made. You just suppress the truth in sin. You will have no excuse when you stand before. None!

Romans 1:19-20 (NASB) because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Randy Wanat

You are assuming it was “made.” It has not been demonstrated; merely asserted. Assuming people are lying to themselves to avoid agreeing with you is something anybody can do, but it doesn’t actually prove anything.

You KNOW that Allah is the one true god, and Mohammed is his prophet, because of how the world is, but you refuse to admit it because you just want to sin. Did I just prove the Koran true? If not, why would you think you saying the same thing about the Bible would be any different?

How can we determine if a claim is true or not? Things that don’t work: faith; appealing to unique features; appealing to personal preference; asserting those who don’t agree are simply being dishonest.

What is a method that actually works at determining if a claim is true?

If I said I was abducted by aliens and rode in their spaceship, would you just accept it as true?

afchief

THE CHOICE

Imagine that you were offered a choice of four gifts:

The original Mona Lisa
The keys to a brand new Lamborghini
A million dollars in cash
A parachute

You can pick only one. Which would you choose? Before you decide, here’s some information that will help you to make the wisest choice:

You have to jump 10,000 feet out of an airplane.

Does that help you to connect the dots? It should, because you need the parachute. It’s the only one of the four gifts that will help with your dilemma. The others may have some value, but they are useless when it comes to facing the law of gravity in a 10,000-foot fall. The knowledge that you will have to jump should produce a healthy fear in you—and that kind of fear is good because it can save your life. Remember that as we proceed.

Now think of the four major religions:

Hinduism
Buddhism
Islam
Christianity

Which one should you choose? Before you decide, here’s some information that will help you determine which one is the wisest choice:

All of humanity stands on the edge of eternity. We are all going to die. We will all have to pass through the door of death. It could happen to us in twenty years, or in six months…or today. For most of humanity, death is a huge and terrifying plummet into the unknown. So what should we do?

Thinking again of your knowledge of the jump that produced that healthy fear—that fear helped you to make the right choice? You know what the law of gravity can do to you. In the same way, we are going to look at another law, and hopefully your knowledge of what it can do to you will help you make the right choice, about life’s greatest issue. So, stay with us—and remember to let fear work for you.

THE LEAP

After we die we have to face what is called “the law of sin and death” (see Romans 8:2). Most people know that Law as “The Ten Commandments.” So let’s look at that Law and see how you will do when you face it on Judgment Day.

Have you loved God above all else? Is He first in your life? He should be. He’s given you your life and everything that is dear to you. Do you love Him with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength? That’s the requirement of the First Commandment (See Mark 12:30). Most of us must admit that we have not succeeded in this for even an hour since we got up this morning.

Or have you broken the Second Commandment by making a god in your mind that you’re comfortable with—where you perhaps say, “My God isn’t a God of wrath, he’s a God of love and mercy?” That god does not exist; he’s a figment of the imagination. To create a god in your mind (your own image of God) is something the Bible calls “idolatry.” Idolaters will not enter Heaven.

Have you ever used God’s name in vain, as a cuss word to express disgust? That’s called “blasphemy,” and it’s very serious in God’s sight. This is breaking the Third Commandment, and the Bible says God will hold him guilty who takes His name in vain.

Have you always honored your parents implicitly, and kept the Sabbath holy? If not, you have broken the Fourth and Fifth Commandments.

Now, have you ever hated someone? The Sixth Commandment prohibits murder. But the Bible says, “Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer” (See 1 John 3:15). This is because hatred is the root cause of murder.

The Seventh is “You shall not commit adultery,” but Jesus said, “Everyone who looks at someone with lustful intent has already committed adultery with that person already in his heart” (See Matthew 5:27-28). You see, God knows your inner heart, and he is most concerned about this. And if we are honest, our heart convicts us. We are selfish, hateful, angry, malicious, and lustful at heart. Even our good deeds are often marred by some selfish motive. The Seventh Commandment also includes sex before marriage, which is called fornication. Have you ever looked with lust or had sex outside of marriage? If you have, you’ve violated this Commandment.

Ever stolen anything, regardless of value (Eighth Commandment)? If so, you are a thief. Stealing would include such things as downloading music illegally, cheating on your taxes or your employer, or short-changing someone you have dealt with, or even having given a customer a raw deal. This would also include stealing another person’s innocence or self-esteem. God is quite concerned about how you deal with people; in fact He expects you to go the extra mile with others!

Have you ever lied—literally to “bear false witness” (Ninth Commandment)? This would include speaking deceitfully or destructively against another person. The Bible tells us, “Lying lips are abomination to the Lord” (See Proverbs 12:22) because He is a God of truth and holiness.

Have you coveted (jealously desired) other people’s things? This is a violation of the Tenth Commandment.

Actually, there are many other things that the Bible discusses as violations of God’s law. Even failing to do something we ought to have done separates us from God’s standard. And just like in a civil court of law, if we have broken even one law we are guilty (See James 2:10). God, by the way, does not grade on the curve. The more we look at ourselves honestly, we confess that we have broken all of the Ten Commandments in thought, word, or deed. We must confess this prayer:

Oh, Lord and most merciful father. I have erred and strayed from your ways like a lost sheep. I have too often followed the devices and desires of my own heart. I have sinned against your holy laws. I have left undone those things which I ought to have done. And I have done those things I ought not to have done. Lord, please have mercy on my soul.

LITTLE JESSICA

So that is God’s moral Law that we each will face. We will be without excuse when we stand before God because He gave us our conscience to know right from wrong. Each time we lie, steal, commit adultery, murder, and so on, we know that it’s wrong. So here is the crucial question. On Judgment Day, when God judges you, will you be found innocent or guilty of breaking this Law?

Think before you answer. Will you go to Heaven or Hell? The Bible warns that all murderers, idolaters, liars, thieves, fornicators, and adulterers will end up in Hell (See Revelation 21:8; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10). So where does that leave you?

Perhaps the thought of going to Hell doesn’t scare you, because you don’t believe in it. That’s like standing in the open door of a plane 10,000 feet off the ground and saying, “I don’t believe there will be any consequences if I jump without a parachute.” There are at least two very good reasons one should believe in hell. First, belief in a just God demands ultimate justice. And since justice is imperfect here on earth, God must administer judgment in the hereafter. Secondly, Jesus taught about hell—and we believe that Jesus is reliable. In fact, Jesus spoke of hell more than any other biblical writer. Hell was his most discussed topic (with angels being number two and love number three)!

To say that there will be no consequences for breaking God’s Law is to say that God is unjust, that He is evil. Perhaps an illustration can explain why. On February 24, 2005, a nine-year-old girl was reported missing from her home in Homosassa, Florida. Three weeks later, police discovered that she had been kidnapped, brutally raped, and then buried alive. Little Jessica Lunsford was found tied up, in a kneeling position, clutching a stuffed toy.

HOW DO YOU REACT?

How do you feel toward the man who murdered that helpless little girl in such an unspeakably cruel way? Are you angered? We hope so. We hope you are outraged. If you were completely indifferent to her fate, it would reveal something horrible about your character. Do you think that God is indifferent to such acts of evil? You can bet your precious soul He is not. He is outraged by all violations against his character.

The fury of Almighty God against evil is evidence of His goodness. If He wasn’t angered, He wouldn’t be good. We cannot separate God’s goodness from His anger. Again, if God is good by nature, He must be unspeakably angry at wickedness. But His goodness is so great that His anger isn’t confined to the evils of rape and murder. Nothing is hidden from His pure and holy eyes. He is outraged by torture, terrorism, abortion, theft, lying, adultery, fornication, pedophilia, homosexuality, and blasphemy. He also sees our thought-life, and He will judge us for the hidden sins of the heart: for lust, hatred, rebellion, greed, unclean imaginations, ingratitude, selfishness, jealousy, pride, envy, deceit, etc. Jesus warned, “But I say to you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (See Matthew 12:36, emphasis added).

The Bible says that God’s wrath “abides” on each of us (See John 3:36) and that every time we sin, we’re “storing up wrath” that will be revealed on Judgment Day (See Romans 2:5). We are even told that we are “by nature the children of wrath” (See Ephesians 2:3, emphasis added). Sinning against God comes naturally to us—and we naturally earn His anger by our sins.

INSTANT DEATH

Many people believe that because God is good, He will forgive everyone, and let all sinners into heaven. But they misunderstand His goodness. When Moses once asked to see God’s glory, God told him that he couldn’t see Him and live. Moses would instantly die if he looked upon God. Consider this:

[God] said, I will make all my goodness pass before you…while my glory passes by, that I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by (Exodus 33:19,22).

Notice that all of God’s glory was displayed in His “goodness.” The goodness of God would have killed Moses instantly because of his personal sinfulness. The fire of God’s goodness would have consumed him, like a cup of water dropped onto the surface of the sun. The only way any of us can stand in the presence of God is to be pure in heart. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).” But as we’ve seen by looking at the Law, not a single one of us is “pure in heart.” These are extremely fearful thoughts, because the God we are speaking about is nothing like the commonly accepted image. He is not a benevolent Father-figure, who is happily smiling upon sinful humanity. In the midst of these frightening thoughts, remember to let fear work for you. The fear of God is the healthiest fear you can have. The Bible calls it “the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10).”

Again, your knowledge of God’s Law should help you to see that you have a life-threatening dilemma: a huge problem of God’s wrath (His justifiable anger) against your personal sins. The just penalty for sin—breaking even one Law—is death, and eternity in Hell. But you haven’t broken just one Law. Like the rest of us, you’ve no doubt broken all these laws, countless times each. What kind of anger do you think a judge is justified in having toward a criminal guilty of breaking the law thousands of times?

LET’S SEE

Let’s now look at those four major religions to see if they can help you with your predicament.

Hinduism

The religion of Hinduism says that if you’ve been bad, you may come back as a rat or some other animal. If you’ve been good, you might come back as a prince. But that’s like someone saying, “When you jump out of the plane, you’ll get sucked back in as another passenger. If you’ve been bad, you go down to the Economy Class; if you’ve been good, you go up to First Class.” It’s an interesting concept, but it doesn’t deal with your real problem of having sinned against God and the reality of Hell.

Buddhism

Amazingly, the religion of Buddhism denies that God even exists. It teaches that life and death are sort of an illusion. That’s like standing at the door of the plane and saying, “I’m not really here, and there’s no such thing as the law of gravity, and no ground that I’m going to hit.” That may temporarily help you deal with your fears, but it doesn’t square with reality. And it doesn’t deal with your real problem of having sinned against God and the reality of Hell.

Islam

Interestingly, Islam acknowledges the reality of sin and Hell, and the justice of God, but the hope it offers is that sinners can escape God’s justice if they do religious works. God will see these, and because of them, hopefully He will show mercy—but they won’t know for sure. Each person’s works will be weighed on the Day of Judgment and it will then be decided who is saved and who is not—based on whether they followed Islam, were sincere in repentance, and performed enough righteous deeds to outweigh their bad ones (Quran, Surah 23:102-103). But we note that a score of 51% won’t get you out of the Junior High, let alone into heaven. So Islam believes you can earn God’s mercy by your own efforts. That’s like jumping out of the plane, and believing that flapping your arms is going to counter the law of gravity and save you from a 10,000-foot drop.

And there’s something else to consider. The Law of God shows us that the best of us is nothing but a wicked criminal, standing guilty and condemned before the throne of a perfect and holy Judge. When that is understood, then our “righteous deeds” are actually seen as an attempt to bribe the Judge of the Universe. The Bible says that because of our guilt, anything we offer God for our justification (our acquittal from His courtroom) is an abomination to Him, and only adds to our crimes (Proverbs 15:8).

Islam, like the other religions, does not solve your problem of having sinned against God and the reality of Hell.

Christianity

So why is Christianity different? Aren’t all religions the same? Let’s see. In Christianity, God Himself provided a “parachute” for us, and His Word says regarding the Savior, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14).” Just as a parachute solved your dilemma with the law of gravity and its consequences, so the Savior perfectly solves your dilemma with the Law of God and its consequences! It is the missing puzzle-piece that you need.

How did God solve our dilemma? He satisfied His wrath by becoming a human being and taking our punishment upon Himself. The Scriptures tell us that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. Christianity provides the only parachute to save us from the consequences of the Law we have transgressed.

Randy Wanat

This is all predicated on the assumption that your holy book is true, to the exclusion of all others, which has not been demonstrated. The parachute could just as easily be Islam if the Koran is true. Why would you reject the parachute Mohammed has offered you?

I get the feeling you haven’t really thought about the possibility of your preferred holy book not being true, much less the possibility of any others being true. All these things you keep bringing up are designed to make you feel good about being a Christian when you are already one. They are not designed to convince others, or else you’d become a Muslim to accept Mohammed’s parachute. You don’t find it convincing when it’s reversed and applied to you, so why would you think anybody else would be convinced by it? That’s the hallmark of an argument meant to reinforce rather than convince.

Now, how can we determine if a claim is true? If I claimed to have been abducted by aliens and that I rode in their spaceship, would you just accept it as true?

afchief

LET’S GO BACK TO THE PLANE

To illustrate this more clearly, let’s go back to that plane for a moment. You are standing on the edge of a 10,000-foot drop. You have to jump. Your heart is thumping in your chest. Why? Because of fear. You know that the law of gravity will kill you when you jump.

Someone offers you the original Mona Lisa. You push it aside.

Another person passes you the keys to a brand new Lamborghini. You let them drop to the floor.

Someone else tries to put a million dollars into your hands. You push the person’s hand away, and stand there in horror at your impending fate.

Suddenly, you hear a voice say, “Here’s a parachute!”

Which one of those four people is going to hold the most credibility in your eyes? It’s the one who held up the parachute! Again, it is your fear of the jump that turns you toward the good news of the parachute.

In the same way, knowledge of what God’s Law will do to you produces a fear that makes the news of a Savior unspeakably good news! It solves your predicament of God’s wrath. God loves you so much that He became a sinless human being in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The Savior died an excruciating death on the cross, taking your punishment (the death penalty) upon Himself. The demands of eternal justice were satisfied the moment He cried, “It is finished!”

The lightning of God’s wrath was stopped and the thunder of His indignation was silenced at Calvary’s bloodied cross: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (Galatians 3:13).” We broke the Law, but He became a man to pay our penalty in His life’s blood.

Then He rose from the dead, defeating death. That means that God can now forgive every sin you have ever committed and commute your death sentence. If you repent and place your trust in Jesus, you can say with the apostle Paul:

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2).

So you no longer need to be tormented by the fear of death, and you don’t need to look any further for ways to deal with the dilemma of sin and God’s wrath. (Note: Beware of cults such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. They masquerade as “Christian,” but they are rooted in self-righteousness—trying to do good works to earn salvation. As it is written:

For by grace have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The Savior is God’s gift to you. The gospel is unspeakably good news for the entire, sinful human race!

God Himself can “justify” you. He can cleanse you, and give you the “righteousness” of Christ. He can make you pure in heart by washing away your sins. He can shelter you from His fierce wrath, in the Rock of Ages that He has cleft for you (See 1 Corinthians 10:4). Only Jesus can save you from death and Hell, something that you could never earn or deserve.

DO IT TODAY

To receive the gift of eternal life, you must repent of your sins (turn from them), and put on the Lord Jesus Christ as you would put on a parachute—trusting in Him alone for your salvation. That means you forsake your own good works as a means of trying to please God (trying to bribe Him), and trust only in what Jesus has done for you. Simply throw yourself on the mercy of the Judge. The Bible says that He’s rich in mercy to all who call upon Him (See Romans 10:12-13). So call upon Him right now. He will hear you if you approach Him with a humble and sorrowful heart.

Do it right now because you don’t know when you will take that leap through the door of death. Confess your sins to God, put your trust in Jesus to save you, and you will pass from death to life. You have God’s promise on it (See John 5:24).

Pray something like this:

Dear God, today I turn away from all of my sins [name them] and I put my trust in Jesus Christ alone as my Lord and Savior. Please forgive me, change my heart, and grant me Your gift of everlasting life. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Now have faith in God. He is absolutely trustworthy. Never doubt His promises. He is not a man that He should lie. The sincerity of your prayer will be evidenced by your obedience to God’s will, so read His Word (the Bible) daily and obey what you read (See John 14:21).

Then go to http://www.livingwaters. com and click on “Save Yourself Some Pain.” There you will find principles that will help you grow in your faith. You might like to get The Evidence Bible, which answers 100 of the most common questions about the Christian faith. Its informative commentary will help you to grow as a Christian.

Bob Johnson

You continue to plagiarized from Ray Comfort.

afchief

LOL!! Oh my gosh!!! I forgot to cite the website!!!

It is still truth!!!!!

Bob Johnson

So are you a theft or mentally feeble?

afchief

Does the truth bother you?

Randy Wanat

You’re still assuming your holy book is true.

If the Koran is true, you’re going to Hell. Simple as that. Why are you telling God you don’t want your place in paradise by not being a Muslim? You are throwing the parachute right in God’s face and telling him you’d prefer the painting. Why are you making such a foolish choice, when your eternal salvation is as easy as accepting Islam as the one true faith?

Are you a Muslim now? No? Of course not, because it is a terrible argument that, as I said, is designed to make you feel good about being a Christian rather than being convincing to non-Christians. If it were a good argument, it would convert you to Islam.

Not going to livingwaters, partially because I have in the past, and I have heard Ray Comfort’s weak apologetics many times. He’s a buffoon. You should be able to carry on a simple conversation about determining if claims are true without hiding behind some mustachioed kiwi’s nincompoopery.

If I told you I had been abducted by aliens and I rode in their spaceship, would you just accept it as true?

You know the answer. But, it’s quite telling that you are reluctant to say the answer.

afchief

You have to choose whom you are going to serve. You can choose to serve nothing, Islam, any religion or Jesus Christ. Choose today whom you will serve. Each choice has eternal consequences whether you want to believe or not. I guarantee it!!!

John 14:6 (NASB) Jesus *said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Randy Wanat

Have you given up on trying to figure out how we determine whether a claim is true or not? Do you care if the things you believe are actually true? If I said I was abducted by aliens and rode in their spaceship, would you just accept it as true?

Can you carry on an adult discussion about how we determine fact from fiction? Or, will you continue resorting to preaching to yourself to quiet the discomfort caused by pondering the possibility of not being correct in your religious beliefs?

afchief

Did I not tell you that God wants us to have faith in Him. Without faith we cannot please Him.

Hebrews 11:1 (NASB) Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

2 Corinthians 5:7 (NASB) for we walk by faith, not by sight—

Randy Wanat

Again, you are assuming the Bible is true. How do we DETERMINE that it actually is true, rather than just assuming that it is?

Bob Johnson

Plagiarized from Ray Comfort taken from a Gospel tract entitled “Why Christianity”

Until you and all those who believe the things you guys do can prove that God doesn’t exist and give us poof, then we have the strongest point of view. You guys don’t know when was the beginning of things, the scientist just put out their best guess. I would not discard the thought of God without solid proof that he doesn’t exist. From my stand point , the alternative does not look good . Hell! That is not a deal that I want.

Randy Wanat

If we don’t know how something happened, “God did it” isn’t the correct answer by default. The correct answer at that point is, “I don’t know.” While it’s not as viscerally satisfying, it is the only honest answer.

Was “Zeus is angry at us” the correct explanation for lightning until we had a scientific explanation for it? Or, would “I don’t know” have been the correct answer to the question of how lightning occurs?

You see, your preferred story doesn’t win by default.

By the way, you’re not only employing the argument from ignorance logical fallacy (our ignorance of the actual explanation is not evidence for any given explanation), but you’re also throwing in Pascal’s wager (what if you’re wrong?). Well, what if YOU are wrong and the Muslims are right? Hell! What if you are wrong and the Norse gods are the real gods? Hel! What if you are wrong and the Greek gods are real? Hades!

You dismiss every fate for nonbelievers of every other religion on the planet throughout history and pretend yours is the only one that ever was. Your odds of being right are, at best, one tick better than zero.

But, if you think that “believe just in case” would fool your deity, your deity is too gullible to deserve worship, and any deity who demands worship is too emotionally insecure to be omnipotent. Your deity, imbued with the psychological characteristics of nomadic invasive goat herders from 3000 years ago, is no more likely than the gods imbued with all the emotional and psychological foibles of man that were worshipped in ancient Greece.

John N

>’Evolutionists rarely attempt to calculate the probability of chance occurrence in their imagined evolutionary scenarios.’

Neither do creationists. If they did, they would soon find out that the probability of creation occuring is equal to 0. Mostly due to the fact no evidence has ever been found for an essential factor, the creator.

>’Over a thousand different kinds of proteins have been identified in the human body, and each has a unique chemical composition necessary for its own particular function.’

Yet another error in creationist thinking. Proteins do not evolve to perform a certain function. As mutations occur, new or changed proteins will be synthetised. If they have added value for the organisms’ fitness, like performing a function better than a previous one, they will be selected for.

Why don’t you even try to understand the science you are trying to refute?

afchief

Because the science is a lie!!!

John N

Of course, afchief. Millions of scientists are lying to you, just like millions of homosexuals, atheists, and of course anybody else who doesn’t belief exactly the same thing as you do.

It’s getting pretty lonely in the religious neigbourhood, no?

afchief

Yep, it sure is a lie!!!

“The way is wide and broad that leads to hell and most take it. The way is straight and narrow that leads to heaven and few find it.”

Yes, the Word of God is soooooooo true!!!

John N

The word of god? Do you have any evidence for that?

These sounds like the words of humans trying to convince other humans into their religious cult.

And indeed a lot of people in the past and even now were convinced, even in absence of any evidence of a god.

afchief

Hebrews 8:10 (NASB)
10 “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws into their minds,
And I will write them on their hearts.
And I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.

God’s law is written on your heart. When you stand before Him you will be without excuse. You will answer and say, but there was no proof that you existed. And Jesus will turn to you and say, yes there is, by what has been made and seen clearly shows of my existence. And you will say, but I needed more proof. And Jesus will say, take him away and assign him with the other non-believers in hell.

The choice is yours.

John N

How funny that when Christians are not able to answer questions on their evidence for a god, they resort to threats of judgment and eternal torture.

As if those threats are supposed to mean anything to unbelievers.

Could it be because they actually have no evidence to show? Only blind faith, based on ancient writings?

afchief

Afchief, did you warn this man to turn from his wicked ways and accept me? I did Lord! He wanted proof that you existed. As I said in my Word, “that which is known about Me is evident within them; for I have made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world My invisible attributes, My eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

He has no excuse. Take him away and assign him with other non-believers. In hell!!!!

John N

Afchief, you do know there are very efficient treatments against illusionary voices in your head nowadays, do you?

If not, please consult a physician.

TheKingOfRhye

Burn in that hell you don’t believe in anyway!

John N

Oh thank you.

More prove of Christian love and forgiveness?

TheKingOfRhye

Feel the Christian love, I guess…….

shepherd

Someone has been lying to you! But you would not know because you are too busy swallowing the nonsense been fed to world . Christians are never lonely!!

John N

Yeah, right, I forgot Christians tend to have imaginary friends.

And for sure somebody has been lying to me, on several occasions, on this forum. The last time being when a Christian told me he knew scientists were al lying.

shepherd

Very valid question. The truth is, the scientist just don’t have the all answers .

John N

Correct.

And to solve that problem, they don’t throw their arms in the air claiming ‘goddidit’, like creationist tend to do. They continue the search for the answer.

Bob Johnson

Actually, he probably did not read it in The Book. The concept of the immortal soul entered the Christian canon with Origen, a heretic, in the second century and is basically derived from Plato.

shepherd

Only someone who did not study or be taught properly in what is really written in the bible would post what you did. From genesis to revelation evidence of the immortality of the soul. Check it out!!

Bob Johnson

Perhaps you should do a google search on “immortal soul”
Check it out.

“For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their memory is gone. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 9:5-6

shepherd

You never really spend time studying the Bible , (evident in what you post ) so how would you know how it measures with all the other false religious literature. When you really do the study, the bible stand alone, nothing else compares to it. Take the challenge and do a honest study .

Nikola Tasev

“You never really spend time studying the Bible”
I have met the standard “You don’t believe the Word because you do not understand it” many times. In my experience it is followed by “in order to understand the Word you need to open your heart/believe”. But here goes:
First, can you please tell me what makes you think I have not studied the Bible? I mean beside the fact I don’t consider it inspired by God.
“When you really do the study, the bible stand alone, nothing else compares to it.”
It all depends on the way you compare it with scripture of other religions. It has its own specifics, and is a valuable historical document. It does not leave the impression of being inspired by the source of the Absolute Morality, though. It regulates slavery instead of forbid it, it recognizes very few rights (life and property, but only for males), and even them only to members of that religion. Outsiders of society are free to enslave or kill in the OT, and people expelled from the religious society (apostates) are to be killed too. Rights we consider moral today, like the right of expression, self-determination, physical, political and religious freedom and so on, are missing.
“Take the challenge and do a honest study .”
You don’t say what you consider to be “honest”. Again, do you deem my previous studies to be dishonest because I don’t agree with you?

shepherd

It not because you don’t agree with me. It is because I have read it and the misunderstandings and misinterpretation in you post is evidence to let me know that you did not do a diligent study. Often times people hear things in life that shapes the way they think and what they believe. Put everything on the table and take a critical look .

Randy Wanat

So, if people don’t understand the Bible the same way you understand the Bible, it is they, and not you, whose understanding is deficient. And, you have determined your understanding to be comprehensive and infallible how, exactly?

JGC

I’m sorry, but if god is such a monster that he’d condemn anyone to eternal torment because despite being (supposedly) omniscient and omnipotent he was singularly unable to communicate the basic fact of his existence and will to his creation in a clear and effective manner he isn’t worthy of being worshipped.

DrewTwoFish

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

Succinct.

shepherd

I am sorry. It is the god that you and others like you created in your mind that operates as you described. The One and only true and living God, has explained everything very clearly, but you and the others choose to ignore. You guys don’t even entertain the thought that you may be wrong . Look at the human anatomy, all the organs and their intricate functions, humans only have other humans, birds produced birds. Orange trees produce orange etc. When you think of those things, read Genesis chapter 1. A brilliant Creator set those things in order. How is that the sea very rarely over flow the shores, water is always flowing from somewhere into rivers and into the sea. You will come into judgment because of what you choose to accept and practice, in this case the overwhelming evidence that exist. God in His wisdom and mercy inspired the Apostle Paul to write about it among other things in Romans 1: 1:18-21. You choose to ignore and push aside the evidence, it is that simple.

JGC

“The One and only true and living God, has explained everything
very clearly, but you and the others choose to ignore”

Nonsense, shepherd. If god had communicated the fact of his/her/its existence clearly and effectively we wouldn’t be having this conversation, there would not be multiple religious traditions extant, etc.

“Look at the human anatomy, all the organs and their intricate
functions, humans only have other humans, birds produced birds.”
I’m sorry–did you have a point? Are you trying to suggest that our observed biological diversity could not have arisen in the absence of supernatural intervention? If so, by what rational argument?

Re: your citation of Genesis and Romans, you’re speaking as if the bible were known to possess some inherent authority–whatever for?

shepherd

It is The Words God!!! It tells us about the beginning all the way to the end. Once again you have chosen to ignore and the evidence .

JGC

What evidence do you believe I’m ignoring, shepherd? Be specific—and remember I’m asking for evidence, not scriptural texts, articles of faith or apologetics.

shepherd

According to Darwin’s theory of evolution , man evolved from primates. It that was true, then why have not seen a stray genes surface among the human family.
God put everything in order. For thousands of years apes has been reproducing and not one has produced a human and no human produce a ape. Why hasn’t there been no more ‘big bang’ . Seems to be a one time occurrence. Or maybe the experts expecting it to happen every few billion years or so.
Muslim are killing Christians because of our faith, along with a lot of other things. Did you know that it was prophesied in the bible? One signs of the last days. But some don’t believe it. I not a scientist , medical Doctor, or Lawyer, just a preacher. So all I can present to you is the Word of God. It stands alone. Because it is true.

TheKingOfRhye

“man evolved from primates”? We still are primates, actually.

TheKingOfRhye

You either have an extremely poor understanding of how evolution is supposed to work, or are being willfully ignorant of it, if you think humans giving birth to apes, or vice versa, is what the theory predicts.

“Why hasn’t there been no more ‘big bang’ . Seems to be a one time
occurrence. Or maybe the experts expecting it to happen every few
billion years or so.”

Well, there ARE some interesting theories that that is what happens. Sort of a big bang, then a big crunch, and repeat every few billion years or so.

“The bible is the only book that one can take and go back in history and find places that we have read about .”

No it’s not. What would that prove anyway? The Bible mentions places that existed and still exist….so?

JGC

I’m sorry, shepherd, but its clear you don’t really understand what evolutionary theories state or predict. There is no necessity for any theory to predict man evolved from primates, for the simple reason that man–members of the species homo sapiens–are primates themselves-we’re members of the order Primates.

“If it was true, then why have not seen a stray genes surface among the human family”
We have seen this, Shepherd–in the origin of sickle cell disease, in hereditable protection from AIDS resulting from a mutation in the CCR5 cell surface receptor gene, in the evolutionary origin of lactose tolerance, etc.

“God put everything in order. For thousands of years apes has been reproducing and not one has produced a human and no human produce a ape”
Again this isn’t true, shepherd. We have seen human beings born from apes, for the simple reason that human beings ARE apes–we’re members of the family Hominidae. If you’re asking why we’ve never seen one species of ape, such as a gorilla or orangutang, give birth to a member of another species of ape, such as a human, I’ll remind you that evolution predicts we should never observe this occurring
.
“Why hasn’t there been no more ‘big bang'”
First I must remind you that evolutionary theories make no statements or predictions regarding how the universe first came into being: evolution only addresses changes in the genetic composition of populations of living organisms over generations, in an already existing universe. Comsological models of the origin of the universe predict that we should not see multiple big bangs, much less one every few billion years or so, because conditions in the universe today are entirely different than the conditions in the universe prior to the big bang (all matter and energy are not concentrated in a singularity, for example.).

“Geneticist has done research and concluded that all female can trace their ancestry back to one woman, documentary on pbs.”
That’s not quite correct: you’re speaking of what has been termed the “Mitochondrial Eve”, which represents the most recent common female ancestor of all humans alive today if they were to trace their ancestry backwards only through the female line. Note that Mitochondrial Eve need not have been a human ancestor (i.e.,a member of the species homo sapiens).

Note also that Mitochondrial Eve would herself have had ancestors–she does not represent the first female human ancestor. There would have been many, many other women aiive at the same time as Mitochondrial Eve, many of whom may have descendants alive today: the only difference between these women and Eve is that they would have had at least one male descendant in any line of descent traced back to them from their descendants alive today.
.
And as with Mitochondrial Eve there must exist a Y-chromosome Adam, the most recent common male ancestor of all humans alive today if ancestry is traced back solely through the male line. Y-Adam and Mitochondrial Eve do not appear to have lived at the same time and it is unlikely they ever encountered each other (dates for the age of Y-Adam range from 140,000 to 50,000 years ago while dates for Mitochondrial Eve range from 250,000 to 100,000 years ago).

And of course like Eve this Adam would himself have had older ancestors, there would have been many other males living at the same time, etc.

Angel Jabbins

Shepherd, I have found that is truly useless to engage these people in discussion. I have lovingly tried on numerous occasions…over and over.. to explain what real Christianity is and what the true nature of God is. I have tried to challenge them on how they can claim to have any basis for their morality if there are no moral absolutes and therefore no Absolute Lawgiver. But, despite all my efforts, it has just been ‘throwing pearls to swine’. I mean no disrespect to these folks at all. But they are hardened in their disbelief and so darkened minds that neither you nor I can make a dent. They cannot, will not, understand because they love their sin so much, are comfortable in it and want no God ruling over them. I will no longer engage them in these long back forth discussions as the one you are having now. Been there, done that too many times. After a while, I will no longer respond because it goes nowhere…just to more ridicule of the faith and God Himself. The result of my efforts I leave with the Lord and pray for them. They have been warned over and over here. They will have no excuse when they stand before God one day. God bless you for your efforts and your faithfulness in contending for the faith.

Nikola Tasev

“According to Darwin’s theory of evolution , man evolved from primates. If it was true, then why have not seen a stray genes surface among the human family. ”
There are several instances of humans being born with tails. Birds have genes for teeth.
“The bible is the only book that one can take and go back in history and find places that we have read about .”
Not so. Homer’s Iliad was the reason archaeologists found the ruins of Troy. Ruins consistent with sieges and battles were unearthed. Does this mean the supernatural claims about Greek gods in the book are true?

shepherd

It is laughable to read ehat you post about the humanwould answerith tails to support your beliefs. When someone look at the undeveloped embryo they would see what seems to be a tail. Sometimes it is there even after birth, only to disappear some months later. Or in some case, a parasitic twin.
In the animal kingdom the tails never dissappear. It would have to be cut off.
You are correct about Homer’s lliad. I should have been more specific, about places in the bible. It gives more comprehensive information.

Bob Johnson

If the Word of God was as clear as you say, then Amos Moses and afchief would not be having the two day long discussion on this very thread.

shepherd

God let it be that clear and simple. If I can understand it, then who ever turn to the Lord genuinely and confess and repent of their sins, the Lord will forgive and cleanse ( 1John 1 :9 )and teach them the truth as they humble themselves and receive the Word. As they humble themselves and receive what they are taught, the Holy Spirit will help them to understand . Those brothers do so because they love their neighbors as themselves. They are their brother’s keepers. Jesus commanded us to tell everyone everywhere. For sure, if those who participates in these forms of discussions misses their opportunity to surrender their lives to the Lord, will be judged and condemned by Lord.

DrewTwoFish

Is he laughing and hooting? He simply stated that he considers God to be myth. He’s not shaking his hand at God.

shepherd

Kyle Everett,
It clear that you have not ‘ really’ read the bible. I challenge you to read it diligently, particularly the new testament and look around you, watch the news, then you will know that it is not man made as you put it . Stop echoing some other joker that you heard talking this trash. I dare you. But on the hand, you will not do it. Because you are afraid to find out that you have been wrong all this time .

Ryan McCullough

Yes yes ignore all that disgusting things in the Old Testament please ignore of the Old Testament. An all-knowing omnipresent omnipotent God couldn’t possibly have foreseen the ramifications of the future perceptions of the Old Testament! Especially all that baby killing in Samuel and Psalms

shepherd

God did not plan the first killing and yet it happened, even today we are highly educated, intelligent, sophisticated etc., and yet even you would kill someone. The bible tell us that “the heart of man is desperate wicked”. You would think that we have evolved from all of that, but we have not .Don’t blame God, we have turned away from Him and how He told us how to live .

JGC

Shepherd, two questions:
Is god omniscient?
Is god omnipotent?
If he’s omniscient he foresaw the first killing. If he’s omnipotent he had the ability to prevent the first killing without violating any principles of free will, but he chose not to for no reason other than it was his express will the murder occur.

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

No, but experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit does.

JGC

How does one reliably determine that one has experienced the poser of a holy spirit, rather than mistakenly believing they’ve experienced the poser of a holy spirit?

Ryan McCullough

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; the burden of proof lies with those who make a positive claim. Extraordinary claims without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Amos Moses

Yes, and the extraordinary claim is that God is a myth and does not exist. Your claim is a negative claim and cannot be proven. Your claim is full of holes. And by your own statements and logic, that you have provided:

“Extraordinary claims without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

This is why you have to understand the difference between claims. Most people, including atheists, do not claim that God is a myth and does not exist because it is a positive claim. If that’s the claim, then it does require evidence. Instead, we believe in the negative unless a positive is proven. If the claim is that God exists, then there needs to be evidence enough to prove that. If not, we suspend our belief in the positive claim, unless otherwise proven, just like we would about unicorns and dragons.

And that’s agnosticism/atheism.

Amos Moses

“Most people, including atheists, do not claim that God is a myth and does not exist because it is a positive claim. If that’s the claim, then it does require evidence.”

The only way for you to have any veracity is to prove your claim. That is what you all say. You can try to couch your words to weasel around it but the fact is you have made a claim, that God is a myth or that He does not exist. That is a positive claim or a negative claim but it is a claim no less. Don’t care.

There is no way for anyone to prove anything to a person, like an A-theist, who denies the truth, even when confronted with the overwhelming evidence that they are wrong, and that truth is self evident, that it is pointless to try to convince them otherwise as they are lying to themselves about the truth and no amount of evidence is going to convince a liar.

No claim is made. Saying you don’t believe in unicorns because there’s no evidence for unicorns is not a claim. It’s the default we all make for when things have no evidence. Otherwise we’d believe everything everyone says about everything.

And if it’s so pointless to try and prove something to an atheist, then why are you on here? Every comment you leave ends with you trying to end the discussion. Why are you discussing this if you clearly have no interest in actual discourse? Why do you continue to reply? Why did you reply in the first place?

And if this is truth, then where is the evidence? I accept no truth that cannot be proven. Do you? Because first you have to prove a supernatural being/beings exist. Then you have to prove that your one religion out of the roughly 4200 that exist in the world is the correct one, and that all the others are false. Then you have to prove that your particular brand of religion is true over the other counter-branches.

If you can come up with real evidence for all of that, you’ll convert me. Or you can just convince yourself that I’m a liar, along with every other atheist, and that we wouldn’t listen anyway. Maybe that makes you sleep better at night.

Amos Moses

“No claim is made. Saying you don’t believe in unicorns because there’s no evidence for unicorns is not a claim.”

Sir, the term “atheist” is its own claim…………….. or do you not get that?

It’s not a claim. Calling oneself a theist or an atheist or a pantheist or a deist is not a claim. It is an identification of belief or non-belief. It’s a non-evidential way of herding ourselves into the most basic of colonies.

By your logic, you would also be making a claim by being being a theist. There would be no difference.

Amos Moses

“Calling oneself a theist or an atheist or a pantheist or a deist is not a claim.”

It absolutely is as it defines your worldview and just how honest or dishonest you are.

It’s a poor and far too basic description to accurately define one’s worldview. And it has nothing to do with honesty.

Grow up, dude. People see things differently – it doesn’t make them liars.

Amos Moses

“It’s a poor and far too basic description to accurately define one’s worldview. And it has nothing to do with honesty.”

It is an accurate description or people would not apply it to them-selves.

It has everything to do with honesty. To deny that God is God or that He is not at all is incredibly dishonest, and the pride to label one self as such deserves what the label says. To deny reality of a Creator is dishonest, and it is dishonest to deny that it is dishonest.

The liar must first convince himself of his lie before he can lie and try to convince others of his lie. Description accurate of an a-theist.

Okay – now I get it. You’re a small man living in a small world. Good luck with that.

WeAre TheCheese

You are misunderstanding the difference between positive and negative claims, and therefore you are misunderstanding why the burden of proof lies on positive claims. Here is a simplified (and absurd) version:

Negative claim: I see no peanuts around me therefore peanuts do not exist.

Positive claim: Peanuts do exist

The first person is making a negative claim because he/she sees no evidence for peanuts. The positive claimer must then grab a bag of peanuts (or evidence of any kind) and show the negative claimer the proof in order to verify his/her positive claim that peanuts do exist.

Now replace peanuts in this example with god/s.

Amos Moses

Again, weasel words. The claim of “A-theist” is its own claim, that God does not exist. FAIL!

TheKingOfRhye

“The claim of “A-theist” is its own claim, that God does not exist.”

First of all, what’s up with “A-theist”? “atheist” is a perfectly good word, why the superfluous hyphen?

Anyway, as I’ve said a million times, atheism is not, or not necessarily at least, a claim that no god exists. It is having a lack of belief in a god, which you can do without claiming that no god exists. You might say “that’s being an agnostic”, or something like that, and yes, it is. One can be both atheist AND agnostic. Or even agnostic and theist, for that matter.

As for the woman in this article….it sounds like she’s being contradictory. Or at least, that she’s not too sure she’s really an atheist after all.

So it is written in that fashion to denote the word as being “without God”. It is a claim that God does not exist. Almost to a person, every self proclaimed A-theist here makes that claim.

Atheism, from the Greek a-, meaning “without”, and theos, meaning “god”, is the absence of belief in the existence of gods.

And if you need more evidence of that, just read all the posts here about. There is proclamation of “There is no evidence, therefore there is no God or gods” as if the standard of belief is evidence. A-theists are really good at telling others about what they believe in when they claim to have no belief. It is a lie. And in any event how would they know anything about belief? They have none.

TheKingOfRhye

“The “A-” in English is a prefix and denotes without or to be absent.”

Correct. That’s why it’s there. Atheism, meaning without theism, which means “belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one
god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a
personal relation to his creatures.” (first definition that came up when I googled theism)

“So it is written in that fashion to denote the word as being “without
God”. It is a claim that God does not exist. Almost to a person, every
self proclaimed A-theist here makes that claim.”

I doubt that. For one, I don’t. It’s like the Russell’s teapot thing. I can’t tell you for sure there’s not a teapot orbiting somewhere between Earth and Mars, but I have no reason to believe there is. I know you’d probably say “believing in God’s not like that” or some such thing, but the point is, that’s how I see it, personally. Even Richard Dawkins, who everyone thinks of as Mr. Atheist Supreme or something, has a chapter in his book titled “Why God almost certainly does not exist”. So even he doesn’t go QUITE that far.

“as if the standard of belief is evidence”

Uh…..seems like a good standard of belief to me!

WeAre TheCheese

You can choose to accept that there are different types of claims, or you can not. You can choose to question assertions, or you can plug your ears and stamp your feet. This positive and negative claim dynamic extends beyond A-theism and religion. It is how basic debate works.

Atheism is a (negative) claim, and it is supported by saying “I see no evidence for a god.” Theism is a (positive) claim, and it is supported by [fill in the blank with positive evidence] – obviously I don’t know what credible evidence supports religion but I’m always open to hearing any.

I realize this debate structure isn’t very fair asking more of theists, but then again, that is why I’m an atheist.

Amos Moses

All very well and good, but christians are not going here to convert A-theists to christianity. A-theists are here to disrupt. Pure and simple.

WeAre TheCheese

You’d be mostly correct on this particular thread, but we can’t forget that billboards, radio, television, movies, news outlets, websites, mission teams and just about any other method of communication is currently being utilized to push Christianity around the world. In other words, Christian proselytizing far out-paces atheist proselytizing and likely all other religions/non-religions as well.

Christians getting riled up about atheist proselytizing is like a heavy metal band telling a librarian to quiet down in the middle of their sold out concert.

Amos Moses

Interesting hyperbole, but hardly accurate. Free speech includes the airing of opinions that others do not share or necessarily want to hear. Being annoyed by the opinion or speech and therefore you get to put a stop to the speech………… is not a right.

Unless of course you are opposed to free speech.

Loud music is hardly in that category, although i can see how you might think so. Truth is harsh to the ear of the person who does not want to hear it.

WeAre TheCheese

I do understand free speech and agree that putting a filter on any speech, especially speech you disagree with, is not what John Locke and the founding fathers envisioned when calling freedom of speech a human right.

But, this has nothing to do with what I’ve said. You said Christians are not on “Christian News” to convert atheists, but atheists are here to disrupt. I couldn’t disagree with you when discussing the posts on this article (although the article is clearly pointed towards atheists), but I also added the notion that Christians spend a lot of time and money trying to convert people and disrupt their prior held ideals (proselytize) all around the world. This has been true for as long as the religion has existed.

Acknowledging Christianity’s heavy track record of proselytizing has nothing to do with limiting, or my wanting to limit freedom of speech.

Amos Moses

” I couldn’t disagree with you when discussing the posts on this article (although the article is clearly pointed towards atheists), but I also added the notion that Christians spend a lot of time and money trying to convert people and disrupt their prior held ideals (proselytize) all around the world. This has been true for as long as the religion has existed.”

No the article is pointed at christians, A-theists just take exception to it as they are very thin skinned.

WeAre TheCheese

It is remarkable to claim an article with the title – “Professing Atheist: Impossible to Escape Subconscious Awareness of God’s Presence” – isn’t directed towards atheists.

Amos Moses

“It is remarkable to claim an article with the title – “Professing Atheist: Impossible to Escape Subconscious Awareness of God’s Presence” – isn’t directed towards atheists.”

Well it is a christian site afterall………………………

WeAre TheCheese

True, Fox news never attempts to provoke liberals and MSNBC never attempts to provoke conservatives in order to gain viewership. I realize this is a website for Christians, but when an article states that atheism is impossible, the author is knowingly provoking atheists. Do you really think “The God Delusion” or “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” were books only intended for atheists and therefore should not receive a peep of complaint from theists?

JGC

No the claim of an A-theist is simply “I don’t believe that a god exists”.

Amos Moses

And that person is not in the truth.

JGC

How can one reliably distinguish between people who are in truth, and and people who are not in truth?

Certainly it must be on some basis other than whether or not
they agree with you regarding the existence of god.

Amos Moses

“Certainly it must be on some basis other than whether or not
they agree with you regarding the existence of god.”

No, that is the basis. If you reject God then you reject truth.

JGC

“The only way for you to have any veracity is to prove your claim.”
Cuts both ways, Amos: the only way for you to have any veracity is also to prove your claim that god does exist.

Amos Moses

No it does not. The presupposition is that God exists. If the other person does not accept that then they are not in truth.

TheKingOfRhye

It’s a mighty big presupposition to be making….that a god, and in particular, the God described in the Bible, exists. Sounds more like a claim than a presupposition to me. I’m not trying to tell you you shouldn’t be making that claim, or presupposition, or whatever you want to call it. Believe it or not, I’m not here to convert anyone. Just recognize that claim for what it is.

Like a lot of atheists, (most, I think, actually) I don’t try to make the claim that no god exists. I just personally don’t see the evidence for it. The one part of what I believe that I guess you could call a “claim” is that I don’t think such a thing is knowable.

But anyway, as Thomas Jefferson said, “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor break my leg.”

Amos Moses

“It’s a mighty big presupposition to be making….that a god, and in particular, the God described in the Bible, exists. ”

It is an even bigger presupposition that He does not?

TheKingOfRhye

Well, it’s like I keep saying, I don’t believe in a god. That is not the same thing as believing no god exists. I don’t think it’s something that can be known. Other people think they can and do know, good for them, I’m just not one of them. You seem to think all atheists are what we would call “strong atheists”, those who 100% believe that no god whatsoever exists. That is just not the case, not even close.

So, yeah, you’re the one making the claim here. If anyone has to prove anything, it’s theists. But anyway, I’m not one of those who goes around asking people to prove their god exists. We could be here all day, for every argument you came up with, I could probably find something that someone came up with 1000 years ago to counter it, and vice versa.

Amos Moses

“I don’t believe in a god.”

Then you are not in truth.

TheKingOfRhye

You can always look at it this way…..there are thousands of gods both you and I don’t believe in. I just go one further.

Amos Moses

You can look at it any way you want, but you are not in truth.

Ambulance Chaser

Did it ever occur to you that you might be the one who is wrong?

Amos Moses

I did consider it, and it was wrong. There is nothing to consider.

Amos Moses

“So, yeah, you’re the one making the claim here”

You are not in truth. Why would i want to prove it to you as you deny truth?

You have a much larger claim. You have no possibility of proving your assertion and you deny others evidence against your position.

TheKingOfRhye

But what assertion do you think I am making?

Amos Moses

Truth is not a what or an it. It is a who. It is separate from us and it is not innate.

Truth is a person and you deny that person.

TheKingOfRhye

Uh, okay…..so, I guess I’ll never be “in truth”, then, huh? Or at least not by any help from you, I guess. Well, whatever….I’m still trying to figure out what “assertion” you think I’m making, though.

Amos Moses

You deny reality. You deny truth. What else is there to discuss. i cannot convince you of a thing or person that you expressly deny.

And yes, you will never be in truth. You may stumble upon it but your ideas and observations are highly suspect.

TheKingOfRhye

Like I said before, though, I’m not really here to ask anyone to give up their beliefs, or have my beliefs changed myself. That’s the one thing I guess you’re right about, that you’re not likely to convince me to believe in something.

Amos Moses

“That’s the one thing I guess you’re right about, that you’re not likely to convince me to believe in something……..”

He still thinks I’m saying that I claim that no god exists, which I’ve said multiple times is not what I’m saying.

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

Just because there’s no evidence for it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Thus dismissing something without evidence is willful ignorance to the fact that it may exist.

Randy Wanat

Do leprechauns exist?

Amos Moses

Do you? or are you a ‘bot?

The only way for you and i to know such things is to have complete knowledge of every thing and yet you are here claiming He does not exist? You deny the evidence of His existence. Why should i believe anything you say beyond that? You deny reality but then have the audacity to claim you cannot see things so they must not exist.

Again, what exactly do we have to discuss? We have absolutely no common ground to have any discussion as you deny the truth of your own existence.

Randy Wanat

I have never claimed that no gods exist.

Do you believe leprechauns exist? Yes or no. You risk nothing in a simple direct answer.

Amos Moses

Asked and answered.

Randy Wanat

You never said if you believe leprechauns exist. Do you believe leprechauns exist? Yes or no. Simple question.

Amos Moses

We have no common ground, no common worldview to have this discussion. You reject God. Let me know if that changes.

The presupposition is that He exists. If you cannot come to that truth, then there is nothing of truth that you will accept, whether i believe they exist or not.

You are not grounded in truth. There is no point for us to discuss anything until that changes.

Randy Wanat

We don’t need common ground for you to say whether you believe leprechauns exist. I have not said your deity does not exist. Do not continue to insist otherwise.

Do you believe leprechauns exist? Yes or no. Simple question.

Amos Moses

You have said, not to me but:

“You are defining your deity into existence. If my deity is real, it created the universe and life. The universe exists, and life exists. Therefore, my deity is real. This proves nothing except a lack of awareness of logical fallacies. Do you care if the things you believe are actually true?””1: We don’t know that the Jesus portrayed in the Bible was real. 2: Given how historically accurate the Bible tends to be, it doesn’t seem likely, if that person did exist, that the events and deeds regarding him actually occurred. 3: Historical accuracy was NOT a priority when the gospels, or any of the rest of the Bible, were written. 4: The god of the Bible is perhaps one of the most horrible characters in literature.” ( got all this from Dawkins, did’t you?)

This demonstrates your antipathy to God.

Therefore, your presupposition is that He does not exist. We have no common ground to have a discussion. You are not grounded in truth.

Randy Wanat

I have not said it does not exist. I am open to a deity existing. Nothing I have said is “your deity does not exist.”

Do you believe leprechauns exist? Yes or no. Simple question.

Amos Moses

“I have not said it does not exist. I am open to a deity existing. Nothing I have said is “your deity does not exist.””

The whole of your postings questions it. You are not in truth. Who cares about any other point until we agree that He exists.

Randy Wanat

I question its existence, yes, in the same way an investigator questions the who, how, and why of a crime. To not question its existence is to claim knowledge without evidence or to not care whether one is believing true things. I am unwilling to pretend to know, and I care about the truth.

Do you believe aliens exist? Yes or no. Simple question.

Amos Moses

Here is problem with that, in thinking truth is an “it” or a “what”. Many seem to think they can know truth apart from God/Christ. Many think they can come to know truth of their own volition.

It can not. That many are unwilling to know truth is at the root of the disagreement and futile thinking.

Randy Wanat

Does one need to know your deity to figure out how hydrogen and oxygen are able to form water? Or, is chemistry the same no matter what one’s theological beliefs may be?

If I told you Zeus exists, and, unless you believe in Zeus, you don’t really understand reality, would that convince you in any way that you were mistaken? Of course not, because it’s a claim that has not been substantiated with evidence. We can claim all kinds of things. When should we accept claims as true?

Do you believe leprechauns exist? Yes or no. Simple question.

Amos Moses

We cannot find truth if we do not know the truth or deny the truth. If we do not know where we are we cannot find your way. We have to start from some basic truth or there is nothing that can be determined. We will remain lost.

If a man is in the wilderness without a map, trying to tell the man with a map which way to go, does the guy with the map follow the guy who is lost and says the map is a myth or based on a myth. But the guy with the map is supposed to throw it away?

A-theists have no map to keep them on target and deny that the map the other guy has is real and true. They rely on their own understanding of which way they are going, and they have no idea from where they started or where they want to end up.

Sorry, that tends not to work out to well. They tend to get dehydrated, hungry and more lost than when they started.

Here is a hint for you: Truth is a Who, not a what or an it.

Randy Wanat

Is 2 hydrogen plus 1 oxygen = 1 molecule water plus energy?

Amos Moses

Who made that come to be? Who created that so that you would know that?

Randy Wanat

You did not answer the question. Is 2 hydrogen plus 1 oxygen = 1 water molecule plus energy? This is a simple question. Either “yes, it is,” or “no, it isn’t.” Which answer do you give?

Amos Moses

There is a more fundamental question. Where did oxygen and hydrogen come from? What makes putting those two together water?

It is not yes or no, just what you want the conversation to be. i want it to be something else.

Randy Wanat

Let’s suppose we had no scientific explanation for how the universe as we know it came to be. The explanation is “I don’t know.” You don’t get to just assert that your idea is right until proven otherwise. That is the argument from ignorance logical fallacy. Our ignorance of the actual explanation is not evidence to support your explanation.

Amos Moses

“You don’t get to just assert that your idea is right until proven otherwise.”

Why not, you do? You assert any number of things that you cannot prove.

Randy Wanat

Such as…?

Amos Moses

“And, your holy stories are, indeed, myths. They are stories with supernatural characters intended to explain mysteries of the human experience, with tenuous connections to reality. They include stories about creating the universe, the world, people, and instructions for how people ought to live.”

How easily they forget.

Randy Wanat

And, you have yet to explain how that definition of myth does not apply to your Bible. Supernatural characters? Check. Tenuous connection to reality (mentions some real places and people)? Check. Attempts to explain mysteries of the human experience? Check. Attempts to explain universal origins? Check. Contains advice for how people and societies should live? Check.

You are assuming the only definition of “myth” is “false story.” Your limited vocabulary is not my shortcoming. Now, you have two options: either explain how that definition does not apply to your Bible, or apologize for calling me a liar. These are the only avenues for the honest person. A liar will avoid both of these. Your pick. Honest discourse or dishonest preaching to hear yourself talk. Which shall it be?

Amos Moses

“You are assuming the only definition of “myth” is “false story.” Your limited vocabulary is not my shortcoming. ”

You are making claims you cannot prove.

Myth
1. a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.
2.stories or matter of this kind: realm of myth.
3. any invented story, idea, or concept: His account of the event is pure myth.
4. an imaginary or fictitious thing or person.
5. an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution.

You are basically saying it is a lie and yet you offer no proof. Unless you are just making up your own definitions to fit your agenda, which you are.

See, not in truth.

Randy Wanat

Great! Let’s look at that first definition.

“a traditional or legendary story,”

Do you contest that the stories are traditional?

“…usually concerning some being or hero or event,”

Do you contest that the stories have heroes or events?

“…with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation,”

Do you contest that the heroes and events may or may not be based on fact or have natural explanations?

“…especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods”

Do you contest that the Bible stories concern a deity?

“…and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.”

Do you contest that the Bible attempts to explain some practice (e.g., keeping kosher), rite (circumcision, eucharist, etc.), or phenomenon of nature (how the universe, planet, and Earthly life came to be)?

You do realize that this is essentially the same definition I offered, right? What part of this definition do you think does not apply to your Bible?

Amos Moses

You are not in truth. Anything you say is suspect. You are calling the bible a lie with absolutely no support for your assertion. You are trying to take the definition of “myth” and fit it into your paradigm, for your own agenda, when in actuality you have no reliable idea of what the bible is about.

So no, we are in fundamental disagreement with your assessment of it.

Randy Wanat

You provided the definitions. You claim that the Bible does not qualify as a myth. According to the definition YOU PROVIDED, the Bible qualifies as a myth. So, either you think the definition YOU PROVIDED is wrong, or you are wrong. Which is it? Because, every part of the first definition applies to the Bible.

Calling me a liar doesn’t change the definition YOU PROVIDED, nor does it change how it applies entirely to the Bible. But, you claim otherwise. Either prove your claim true or admit you were mistaken and apologize for calling me a liar.

Amos Moses

“According to the definition YOU PROVIDED, the Bible qualifies as a myth. ”

No according to you it does. We are in fundamental disagreement.

Randy Wanat

Not really. I ask how the definition does not apply, and you respond by saying it doesn’t. That isn’t disagreement; that’s you not understanding how questions work.

Amos Moses

You are not in truth and therefore you do not understand what you are reading in the bible. i am not going to debate what the bible says with a person who is not in truth. We fundamentally disagree.

Except the part about it being supernatural. It is but that does not put it in the “myth” category. Well according to you it may, but your observations are tainted.

Randy Wanat

So, you think the only part of the definition that applies is the supernatural part?

You think the stories are not part of a tradition, that they don’t attempt to explain natural phenomena, that they don’t focus on deities of some sort, that they don’t revolve around people, places or events that may or may not have a basis in fact?

Really? How do those characteristics not apply? Please, be specific.

Amos Moses

i think that until you are in truth, you will not understand what you are reading. If you can tell me what all of scripture is about, you may have a chance, but until then it is beyond your ability to understand.

Reading the words is not understanding what the text is talking about.

Randy Wanat

That is circular reasoning. I won’t understand it until I understand it. If you think I don’t understand it, and you think you have a comprehensive understanding of the entire Bible, how unChristian is it to keep it to yourself and not explain it to those who seek understanding?

You concede that there are supernatural aspects to the Bible. Do you also concede that the Bible attempts to explain certain natural phenomena? For example, rainbows, different languages, painful childbirth, the origins of the universe, Earth, and life on Earth? Does the Bible not attempt to explain any of these?

Amos Moses

No, no circles. Until you are in truth you will never understand what you are reading. Any discussion of your idea of what it says is futile until you are in truth.

Randy Wanat

My status has nothing to do with how YOU interpret the Bible and the definition of “myth” that you provided. You have already conceded one point to me. What are you afraid of if you have to concede any other points? Are you afraid that, in a specific context, the word “myth” would be valid, and somehow that would mean the entire thing is false? Because, that’s not how words work with honest people. This is seriously not a trick. You have made statements that, by ANY interpretation of the Bible, are not true. You say it is not a myth, yet the definition you cite applies at every level, whether one is a Biblical literalist or not. You are saying the definition does not apply. It is demonstrably applicable. Yet, you contend otherwise. But, rather than justifying your contention, you claim that you can only discuss such things with someone who is “in truth,” a term that has no widely recognized meaning. You don’t explain what it means. You don’t explain how one becomes it. You don’t explain what that has to do with your understanding of something. You refuse to answer ANY question directly and honestly. You refuse to behave like a grown adult and have a civil discussion. You claim I have said things I never said and, when I demonstrate otherwise, you don’t even apologize for the error. How can a person distinguish you from a liar?

Amos Moses

“My status has nothing to do with how YOU interpret the Bible and the definition of “myth” that you provided. ”

Your status has everything to do with your saying it is a myth. FYI, i have no “interpretation” of the bible.

“What are you afraid of if you have to concede any other points?”

God is supernatural. Beyond that you do not understand what you are reading. Your antipathy to God/Christ prevents you from understanding it. Why would i concede to a point or points that are clearly wrong.

“You say it is not a myth, yet the definition you cite applies at every level, whether one is a Biblical literalist or not. ”

It is not myth, despite your trying make it seem so.

“You refuse to answer ANY question directly and honestly. You refuse to behave like a grown adult and have a civil discussion.”

i have answered all the questions that i see as having anything to do with the discussion and i ignore the “red herrings” you keep trying to inject. Deal with it.

Randy Wanat

If you understand things you have read to have any meaning, you have interpreted it by definition. I apologize if this sounds crass, but if you don’t understand how words work, I’m not sure you are capable of intellectual discourse beyond “food goes in my mouth.” That is, quite literally, how low you’re making yourself appear by insisting that the widely accepted usages of particular words are not what they are. You are denying language as a means of communication of thoughts and abstract concepts. Either you are trying to convince me that you’re daft, or you actually are daft and can’t help it. I don’t know which is worse, or which it is.

Amos Moses

“If you understand things you have read to have any meaning, you have interpreted it by definition.”

And if that is what you are bringing to the bible then that is not the proper way to read the bible. Again, your antipathy to God/Christ is keeping you from understanding what it is saying.

Amos Moses

“If you think I don’t understand it, and you think you have a comprehensive understanding of the entire Bible, how unChristian is it to keep it to yourself and not explain it to those who seek understanding?”

You are not seeking to understand.

Your antipathy to God/Christ keeps it from you. i cannot change that for you, only Christ can change that.

Randy Wanat

Would you be unwilling to discuss Islam with a Muslim?

Amos Moses

Discuss what? At least the Muslim is open to the idea that there is a God and who that God may be.

A-theists are not.

Randy Wanat

I have already said I am open to a deity’s existence. I am open to almost anything existing.

If I said I had an invisible dragon in my basement, would you just accept that claim as true?

Amos Moses

“I have already said I am open to a deity’s existence.”

No, despite your words you demonstrate an antipathy to God and His words.

Randy Wanat

Calling me a liar doesn’t change anything. I propose that you know that if you open yourself to the possibility that I could be right about anything even tangentially related to your religious beliefs, it would force you to admit that it’s possible that all of your religious beliefs could be wrong, and that possibility scares you so much that you’re more willing to be an incoherent liar than even entertain for a second that your beliefs have any possibility of not being correct.

You do nothing to dissuade one from having this impression. Your behavior consistently reinforces this hypothesis. By their fruits you shall know them. By your fruits, this is how I know you. If you don’t want to continue being an incoherent liar, just acknowledge when you have said things that were demonstrably untrue. That is what HONEST people do. You ARE honest, right? You ARE fallible, right? You ARE willing to admit error when error is demonstrated like an honest person would, right?

Amos Moses

Where did i call you a liar?

Randy Wanat

“I have already said I am open to a deity’s existence.”

No, despite your words you demonstrate an antipathy to God and His words.

—

I made a statement. You said my statement is not true. Not only that, but you are telling me what my thoughts are, and that they are somehow different than what they are.

Do you believe leprechauns exist? Are you open to leprechauns existing?

Amos Moses

“I made a statement. You said my statement is not true. ”

Being in error is not calling you a liar.

“Do you believe leprechauns exist? Are you open to leprechauns existing?”

Again, more red herrings.

Randy Wanat

Not red herrings. It goes to epistemology, which is very much the point.

Do you believe leprechauns exist? Yes or no.

Amos Moses

“Not red herrings. It goes to epistemology, which is very much the point.

Do you believe leprechauns exist? ”

Definitely Red Herrings…………………..

Randy Wanat

No, because whether you do or not relates to epistemology, and, if you answer it with “yes” or “no,” you will understand how. Are you too cowardly to do it, or too dishonest, or too weak of faith?

Amos Moses

Does not relate to the topic at hand. Red Herring………..

Randy Wanat

Fear or dishonesty. Which is it, or is it both?

Amos Moses

Studying epistemology does not put you in truth. You are not in truth.

Randy Wanat

You don’t think understanding how we come to understand things as being true is pertinent? You declare truth, but how you have come to that conclusion is irrelevant? You realize “in truth” is a nonsense phrase that has no meaning to anybody but you, right? It’s part of that new language you have been making. Try talking like a normal human being, instead of trying to sound clever. You’ll stop sounding like a pompous ignorant liar.

Amos Moses

“You don’t think understanding how we come to understand things as being true is pertinent? ”

And you would be wrong.

Randy Wanat

That is what epistemology is. Yet, you refuse to discuss it in any way. It’s so relevant that you won’t engage in conversation about it. Someday, you’ll stop lying and contradicting yourself.

Amos Moses

Being in “epistemology” is not the same as being in truth. If you want to be in truth you must first drop your antipathy to Christ, and ask Him to help your understanding of the bible and what it says.

Or don’t. It is no more complicated than that.

Randy Wanat

A Muslim claims that reading the Koran and seeking the guidance of Allah will result in understanding the Koran properly as the last and most accurate communications of God via Mohammed, his last prophet. If you both have the same method, yet reach mutually exclusive conclusions, does that sound like a good method for determining factual accuracy? If a Muslim reads the Bible as you recommend, that Muslim should be converted to Christianity. If you read the Koran as the Muslim recommends, you should be converted to Islam. Given the obvious problem with the methodology you both espouse, shouldn’t we rely on better methods for discovering what is true and what is not?

Amos Moses

” If a Muslim reads the Bible as you recommend, that Muslim should be converted to Christianity.”

No and you reading it that way is not any guarantee that you will become a christian. But if you cannot read it that way then you have no chance of understanding what the bible is saying. Until you are in truth, in Christ, you will not understand.

It is kept from “the natural man” to understand the ways of God/Christ and what the bible is saying. Not by me or anyone else, but by Christ. Any one not in Christ is a “the natural man”. Muslim, Hindu, agnostic, atheist, whatever.

We are not talking about the Koran, we are talking about the bible. There is no other way for men to know truth. The truth that only God/Christ can lead to knowledge.

Randy Wanat

But, do you admit that both of you are employing the same methodology to arrive at mutually exclusive conclusions? The Muslim makes the same claim regarding the Koran that you make regarding the Bible. How can an objective outsider with no preference and no incentive for either of your books determine which of you, if any, is correct?

You are asserting I have antipathy. That is untrue. I have apathy, in the same way you would have apathy for a character in any other faith’s holy text. Do you understand the difference? More to the point, do you care if the things you say are true? The fact that you won’t answer any of this should make the faithful clear about the strength of your faith and knowledge of the word.

Amos Moses

“But, do you admit that both of you are employing the same methodology to arrive at mutually exclusive conclusions? ”

Don’t know if that is what Muslims believe, do not care, not relevant. But even if they do, and i doubt it, two opposites cannot both be true. There is nothing in common between the two. Darkness is black, Light is white. There is nothing of one in the other. They are not compatible. There is no brotherhood between them. One is either a lie or the other one is. If part of it is a lie, then it is all a lie.

“How can an objective outsider with no preference and no incentive for either of your books determine which of you, if any, is correct?”

There is no such animal, or person. FYI, it is not about a book. It is about what you are going to do with the person of Christ.

Randy Wanat

The Bible is the claim. So, yes, it IS about a book, as much as Islam is about a book. Without the stories, you have no religion.

I have been told by a Muslim to do the same thing you have said, but with the Koran. I have already said you are making mutually exclusive claims. And, I have no preference or incentive for either of your religions. I don’t care which is true, or if either is true. So, how would I determine which text is true if you both give the same instructions regarding your deities and holy texts? Obviously those instructions cannot be the way, if they are expected to lead to mutually exclusive conclusions. So, how, then, can a person determine what is actually true? I care if my beliefs are an accurate reflection of reality. What method will yield that most reliably and consistently?

Amos Moses

“Without the stories, you have no religion.”

No, without the book there is no truth. God would still be here. The book is not needed for God to be here and be known.

“Obviously those instructions cannot be the way, if they are expected to lead to mutually exclusive conclusions.”

Yes, If you apply the right standard to the right book, it will work. If you apply it to the wrong book, it won’t and you will be in error. So it still comes down to, what are you going to do with Christ?

But it is deeper than that. It is only the beginning.

Randy Wanat

The book is still the claim. The Koran is the claim. The Bible is the claim. Which claim, if any, is true, and how can we determine that? What is an objective means of finding truth in claims, if one cares about believing only true things?

Amos Moses

The only means of determining truth is God. God/Christ is truth. There is only one truth.

Randy Wanat

That is the claim the Bible makes, just like the Koran claims Allah is the one true God and Mohammed is his prophet. The claim isn’t the verification of the claim. How do we determine if the claim is actually true when we care about believing only true things?

Amos Moses

” scares you so much that you’re more willing to be an incoherent liar than even entertain for a second that your beliefs have any possibility of not being correct.”

Why would i be afraid of a wrong conclusion?

Randy Wanat

You have ego, identity, and social networks tied into your religious beliefs, to the point that even chipping the corner of one brick in the wall of your belief creates cognitive dissonance so great that you must avoid even the appearance of being open to the possibility that your beliefs are in any way incorrect. That’s how I would explain it, hypothetically. It’s very common, and people who deconvert out of literalist religious sects describe just such feelings consistently when recounting their experiences with their own spiritual fallibility.

Amos Moses

You want to make this about me, fine, but we are talking about a-theists. Call me whatever you want if it makes you feel better about yourself, it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

Randy Wanat

What “discussion?” I am asking questions, while you refuse to engage by answering even simple questions like whether two hydrogen plus one oxygen equals one molecule of water plus energy. You are afraid to engage intellectually honestly and directly with someone who consistently demonstrates that you don’t know what you’re talking about. I have merely hypothesized as to why.

Amos Moses

“” I am asking questions, while you refuse to engage by answering even simple questions like whether two hydrogen plus one oxygen equals one molecule of water plus energy. ”

Red herrings……

Randy Wanat

Epistemology is not a red herring. How we come to believe and know things is THE topic, but you’re afraid to talk about it.

Amos Moses

“By their fruits you shall know them. By your fruits, this is how I know you.”

So you do not believe the bible but you manage to quote it. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Randy Wanat

Does the Bible not say that the devil knows scripture? 🙂

Knowing passages that have significance and using them to make a point is not the same as accepting the stories in the book as true. Surely you can understand that rhetorical devices aren’t evidence that someone believes in the text of the rhetorical device. Then again, I can’t just assume that, as that would rely upon you sharing a common language with common definitions, and that is becoming ever more evidently not the case. Not my fault, and not my shortcoming. You can choose to be honest and use a shared language, or you can continue being dishonest. Your choice. I was always of the impression that Christians prided themselves on their honesty. You’re free to destroy that impression, though it does not help you make any of your arguments.

Amos Moses

“Does the Bible not say that the devil knows scripture? :)”

Got a chapter and verse? Or are you showing your mental slip in that revelation about yourself? FYI, satan was the one who said “Did God really say…………..” and we know what happened after that.

It is very dangerous to use examples we are not familiar with as it tends to not go very well for us.

Randy Wanat

The devil quoted scripture in the Bible. It doesn’t say specifically that he knows it; it says that he quotes it, thus knowing it. Let’s not be obtuse. Or, at least, let’s not have you be obtuse for a change.

Amos Moses

Actually, he misquotes it and for nefarious reasons.

Amos Moses

“Do you also concede that the Bible attempts to explain certain natural phenomena? For example, rainbows, different languages, painful childbirth, the origins of the universe, Earth, and life on Earth? Does the Bible not attempt to explain any of these?”

The bible does not “atempt” to do anything.

Randy Wanat

Every explanation is an attempt to explain something. How accurate the attempt is is another matter. Do you recognize that attempts can be successful or unsuccessful?

Amos Moses

It does not “attempt” anything.

Randy Wanat

Do you think it explains anything?

Amos Moses

i know it explains everything.

Randy Wanat

You BELIEVE it explains everything. So, you believe it successfully attempts to explain everything. Your refusal to acknowledge language and trying to craft your own version only makes you sound foolish.

Amos Moses

“Your refusal to acknowledge language and trying to craft your own version only makes you sound foolish.”

What “version” have i given you so that you could even make that statement?

Randy Wanat

You have, thus far, refused to acknowledge your error regarding myth and interpret. You insist these words mean something secret that you won’t share, and when shown your error, you act as though you are correct.

Amos Moses

No, you have done that by bringing your own ideas to the text of the bible and it keeps you from understanding what it is about.

When Moby Dick begins with “Call me Ishmael,”, that does not make the book about Muslims. But if you want to read it that way, you may, but it is not the proper way to read it.

You are bringing your preconceived notions to the bible in reading it. That is not the proper way to read scripture.

Randy Wanat

Do you understand the Bible in a certain way? Do you understand the text to mean certain particular things? Yes or no.

Amos Moses

The author meant it to mean certain things. There is no private interpretation of scripture, which is what you are talking about. What i think it means is of absolutely no relevance.

Randy Wanat

Now you are telling me what I mean. I mean exactly the things I say. You desperately flail to avoid anything I say or ask getting past your armor of belief. You are afraid. If you were not, you could discuss things rationally.

Amos Moses

i am here to tell you the truth about the bible. You want to wander off into every different direction as a distraction. Hope it is fun for you.

Randy Wanat

Actually, I have asked only a few questions, and you are too fearful or dishonest to answer any of them directly. You have already conceded a second point of the definition of “myth” applies to the Bible. You know as well as I that the whole thing applies. Be honest for once and admit it.

By the way, epistemology is critical as it refers to how we come to know things as truth. Do you not agree that you have somehow determined that the Bible is true? Is not the method by which you did that pertinent?

By the way, simply comprehending written words is not enough. Deriving an intended meaning from them is more important. You said that, in so many words. By doing that, one comes to understand the text in a particular way. Which, yes, is interpreting the tet. So, you have said that you do the things that make up the act of interpreting, but you refuse to call it that. Thanks for at least accidentally admitting I was right again. I can’t believe how afraid you are of doing that. You must really think I am evil, if agreeing with anything I say strikes such paralyzing fear in you that you feel compelled to avoid any direct acknowledgement of the validity of anything I say. You are so afraid, you wouldn’t even say if 2 hydrogen plus 1 oxygen equals 1 water molecule plus energy. I really frighten you, don’t I?

Amos Moses

You are not the author of the bible.

Randy Wanat

You don’t know that.

Amos Moses

What language are your speaking about?

Randy Wanat

The language where words have secret meanings that only you know and that don’t match any known definitions. Myth and interpret, for two easy examples.

Amos Moses

There are no secret meanings. Sorry, but i have given you no”version” of my own so i am not sure what you are speaking about.

Randy Wanat

Yes, you have. You have a secret set of definitions for words that don’t match up to any widely accepted definitions of those words, and when I use the widely accepted definitions, you declare the word to mean something else. Just because you don’t share your definitions does not mean you aren’t demonstrating that you reject this language and prefer your own.

Amos Moses

“You have a secret set of definitions for words that don’t match up to any widely accepted definitions of those words, and when I use the widely accepted definitions, you declare the word to mean something else.”

The bible defines itself. It is not up to me to decide what it means, the author has decided. My ideas on it have no relevance to what it is. Mans “definitions” mean nothing in reading the bible as the author intended.

Randy Wanat

Do you understand what the Bible says to mean something particular? Yes or no. Answer a question honestly and directly for once. Honest people do it all the time. Liars find every excuse not to do it. Are you honest or are you a liar?

Amos Moses

The bible is primarily about a person. FYI, everyone tells lies, even you, even me. Red herring and off topic.

Randy Wanat

So, now you concede TWO points of the definition of “myth” apply to the Bible. You could just be honest and admit that the entire definition applies. Or, you can continue your liar’ charade, or keep protecting your wall of belief out of abject fear.

Amos Moses

“So, you believe it successfully attempts to explain everything.”

Again, it “attempts” to do nothing.

Randy Wanat

When something succeeds in doing something, it is an attempt until success is demonstrated. So, you are now redefining “attempt.” You now have at least three words whose known definitions you reject for some secret definition that only you know. This is why I say you’re rejecting English to create your own language where words only mean what you want them to mean.

Amos Moses

“When something succeeds in doing something, it is an attempt until success is demonstrated. So, you are now redefining “attempt.””

No, it either does it or it does not. The bible does not “attempt” to do anything.

Randy Wanat

When a pitcher needs to strike out a batter, he attempts to achieve a particular outcome. He either succeeds or fails to achieve that outcome, but it’s an attempt either way.

When the Bible needs to explain something, it attempts to achieve a particular outcome. It either succeeds or fails to achieve that outcome, but it’s an attempt either way.

Attempt: To make an effort at; try; undertake; seek

Asserting that it successfully does something does not mean there is not an attempt. EVERY explanation is an attempt. Whether it successfully explains is another matter, but the attempt occurs as soon as the explanation is posited.

What language would suit you better? English is obviously not your forte. Is English not your first language, did you recieve an abysmal education, or are you dishonest? Please, for once, be honest.

Amos Moses

First, the bible does not “attempt” to explain anything. It states it plainly and it succeeds.. You are trying to say God failed at something. Sorry, it did exactly as He intended. It still does. Many just don’t like hearing the truth. There are no half-measures in the bible, there is no “almost”.

You are trying to use mans definitions and apply it to Gods work. Fail!

Randy Wanat

It states something that it posits as an explanation. Does it get demonstrated as accurate? If so, the attempt is successful.

A batter swings to hit a home run. Does his swing result in a home run? If so, the attempt is successful.

The act of positing an explanation IS the attempt. Unless you’re arguing that no explanations are posited anywhere in the Bible, which you obviously cannot do at this point, you have no option but to either acknowledge your error or admit that you’re being intentionally dishonest, because I simply refuse to believe you are actually as stupid as you are making yourself appear. I am at least charitable enough to grant you that.

Amos Moses

So when the weatherman says the sun rose………..what…… is it true or not?

Again, you do not understand what you are reading. Understanding the words is about 10% of it. God does not “attempt” anything.

Randy Wanat

Do you understand the Bible to mean something particular?

Either you do or you don’t. Either what it says holds a particular meaning to you or it does not. This is entirely binary. That you are working this hard to avoid answering it directly and honestly demonstrates how afraid and/or dishonest you are. I don’t care which it is. Man up and answer the question.

Amos Moses

Tribute: Prince Protégé Turned Born Again Christian Vanity Dies at 57

He is still working………………… Thats an HR.

Randy Wanat

You are so afraid. So very afraid. It’s sad that religion has turned you into a scared little man who can’t answer a single question directly because it might make him think.

JGC

Why should the presupposition be that god exists, rather than the presupposition being god does not exist?

Amos Moses

Why not? It is my presupposition. If we disagree on this fundamental point then we need go no further. The dismissal of God is proof that the person holding that position is not interested in the truth.

Why do i want to talk to a person not in truth?

JGC

From what is that presupposition derived? I’m sure you didn’t flip a coin, saying “If it’s heads the presupposition will be god exists, and if it’s tails the presupposition will be god doesn’t exist”, so there must be some reason you’ve chosen the former over the latter to constitute the
presupposition.

Hopefully it’s for some reason other than you’re unable to defend a belief that god exists unless the argument proceeds from the presupposition
god exists.

“The dismissal of God is proof that the person holding that position is not interested in the truth.”

To no greater extent that the embrace of god is proof that the person holding that position is not interested in the truth.

“Why do i want to talk to a person not in truth?”
There’s this thing called witnessing for your faith I recall hearing about–but I don’t recall it was to be done only to people who share that same faith. In fact I thought the whole point of the exercise was to spread the message of faith to unbelievers…
Silly me…of course you’re only supposed to witness to people who are already convinced. That way you don’t get asked inconvenient questions, or asked to offer some form of evidence demonstrating what you believe you know to be true actually is true other than asserting “I just know!!”

Amos Moses

So we disagree on that fundamental point. What else is there to talk about?

JGC

The process by which you chose which presupposition to embrace–that god does exist or that god does not exist–perhaps?

Amos Moses

Many start at the point that He has to be proven, when His being is manifest in everything. It does not have to be proven, it is a given. To deny that is to deny reality. Who wants to talk to a person that denies the reality in front of them?

JGC

I didn’t ask if many started with the presupposition that god exists, I asked you why you’ve chosen to embrace the presupposition god exists rather than the presupposition god does not. There was some kind of actual thought process involved in making that choice, wasn’t there?

Amos Moses

” I asked you why you’ve chosen to embrace the presupposition god exists”

It is the only sensible position, to be in truth. If you claim there is any truth but deny that truth, that He exists, it proves you have no position in truth.

To claim there is no absolute truth is a truth claim. It is a ridiculous position as it refutes itself.

JGC

You seem to be using some definition of the word ‘truth’ I’m unfamiliar with, such that I can’t follow your argument (assuming that there is some argument hiding here). If you’re trying to advance something along the lines of

If God exists there must exist an ultimate truth
And ultimate truth exists
Therefore god exists

you’ll need to establish that the first two propositions are themselves accurate before your conclusion is meaningful at all,

Amos Moses

So your saying there is no ultimate truth? or are you saying there is no truth?

Truth is a person. You deny that person.

JGC

I’m asking you to explain how you’ve determined there is an ultimate truth and that truth is a person.

Amos Moses

Truth is not found in us, it comes from outside us, outside our experiences. It is not animal, nor mineral nor vegetable. It comes from a place we do not have access to normally. No man has any ability to determine truth by his own experience or the experience of others.

What other source is there? If there is ultimate evil, then there is ultimate good, ultimate truth.

John N

Creepy!

But I understand that teaching this stuff to children will leave a long lasting impression. No wonder they still have nightmares even when grown up.

Emmanuel

It’s so simple to the children and complicated and confusing to the intelligent adult. Weird!!!!

John N

Like because children are easier to manipulate into believing impossible things? I get it.

Cady555

Why is it that that always reminds me of a Mob protection racket?

Worship me / Pay me.
Why should I?
For protection.
Protection from what?
From what I will do to you if you don’t worship me / pay me.

Emmanuel

pay me? here we go again with the tithes.

Cady555

The pay part relates to paying the mafia for protection.

Same conversation, different threat.

Randy Wanat

The power of childhood indoctrination is not in question. Using it as evidence for the existence of supernatural things is absurd.

I’m an atheist and I have no sense whatsoever of a god’s presence. Maybe Elizabeth King finds it difficult to shake the idea that there’s a god because she was brought up to believe in a god, and grew up attending church in a very religious family.

MBR

An atheist isn’t someone who “denies god,” although I’m sure many people do see it that way. An atheist is defined as someone who does not have a belief in a god or gods. If 8% of “atheists” have a belief in a god or a universal spirit, or whatever, then they are -by definition- not atheists. Atheism is a bit of a misnomer in that it is not a system of belief. Atheism is a single, solitary, belief on a single, solitary, issue. The issue being the existence or nonexistence of whatever god is the topic of discussion and the belief being that that god doesn’t exist. It frustrates me to no end that so few believers seem to know or acknowledge this.

Guzzman

I too am frustrated with this definitional obfuscation created by religionists regarding atheism. Atheism is the lack of belief in a god, gods, or the supernatural – plain and simple.

Much is made of the Pew finding that 8 percent of self-identified atheists believe in a god or some sort of spirit. That “finding” is what a survey research professional would classify as measurement error. Having developed survey and other psychometric instruments for 33 years, I can attest that people make silly mistakes all the time in their responses. For example, employees will respond on a job analysis survey that they don’t perform a particular task on the job and then proceed to check off that they spend 80 percent of their time on a task they just indicated they don’t perform on the job!

Proper survey design and analysis would not allow such an anomalous result to even be reported. It’s referred to as a data hygiene problem.

Chrissy Vee

She is not an atheist. She is a rebel fallen from grace. Choosing not to believe in God does not make him non-existent. It’s a choice. She should be grateful His presence is still with her. If she only knew the blessing of repentance and return. Lord, please bring her back.
~For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:~ Romans 1:20

WorldGoneCrazy

There are no atheists, only stubborn insubordinates. 🙂

Orion Jones

“Choosing not to believe in God does not make him non-existent”

Similarly, choosing to believe in God does not make him exist. Nor Shiva, Allah, Zeus, Freya or Xenu.

Chrissy Vee

He that hath an ear, let him hear….
~For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:~ Romans 1:20
Your eyes have been blinded because you choose not to see. Jesus can drop the scales from your eyes. He is the WAY, the TRUTH, the LIFE. Make the right choice before it is too late. You are running out of time. Peace.

Orion Jones

Deuteronomy 21:18-21
18 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

Cady555

Stop and think about the reasons you “choose” not to believe in Thor. Those are the reasons I do not believe in your god.

Chrissy Vee

Cady, you’re so cute. 🙂 I really hope you get it someday. If you truly seek him, you will find him. But you’re running out of time. Biblical prophecy is unfolding right before your eyes but you have been blinded. Let Jesus open your eyes. Peace.

Nikola Tasev

I can promise you if you really seek Thor you can find Him. Same goes for Krishna.
You have no real reason to seek any of them. It is the same with atheists.

Chrissy Vee

Yeaaaaah, no. Nice try though.

Nikola Tasev

Wow, my mind is blown. I am overwhelmed with your arguments. I never thought to look at it that way. This changed my worldview entirely.
The only way to improve this comment is if you quoted the Bible. Because if you quote something we don’t believe at us we’ll start believing it. Just as you’ll start believing in Hinduism is you read the Vedas enough, right?

Chrissy Vee

Another nice attempt. Sorry, I have already responded to another antagonist such a yourself. Read it and understand. I won’t be baited. Sail on.

shepherd

Thor is myth and Krishna died long ago.

Nikola Tasev

Upvoting your own posts… wow… you must be desperate.
More on the topic – there are no reliable historical records on any of the supernatural claims, like the miracles, Resurrection and so on.
Just as ancient Troy was a real place and king Arthur was based on a real person… this does not prove any of the supernatural claims of the legend.

Cady555

Yech. You don’t know me. You know nothing about my personal appearance. Using an adjective one would use to describe a young child is merely a way to minimize and diminish a person when one has nothing of substance to say.

I was a christian for quite some time. Aside from my conclusion that christianity is just plain silly, I have zero desire to rejoin the ranks of people who are self important and patronizing.

Chrissy Vee

You’re right. I guess I responded silly and patronizing to your silly and patronizing comment.

Cady555

My comment was serious. About 3000 gods have been worshipped by humans. You reject all but one. Why? Think about it. What are the factors that cause you to conclude that those other gods do not exist?

Once you understand this, you will have a sense for why I reject your god even though you disagree.

Chrissy Vee

I understand. You reject him because you choose to. Now you come to Christian sites, and try to talk believers into making the bad choice that you made in forsaking our Saviour. No thank you.
To lump God together with the likes of Thor…etc. shows your total lack of spiritual understanding of your Creator. Had you been indwelled by the Holy Spirit, you would have never turned away. God’s Holy Spirit is a witness to ours that He IS. It is the reason why we may boldly proclaim that we know, no matter how many naysayers declare we can not. Blindness, deafness, pride…. SIN, will keep all of you from knowing Him and His truths.
I don’t know what you believe in, but if you truly believe you are right, you better hope you are. There is and can only be one truth. That is Jesus Christ. Glory to his name.

Cady555

This article is about atheists. That is a topic I am familiar with. When did I suggest that any christian reject their beliefs? Christians make a lot of assumptions about atheists, and tell us we need to change our beliefs all the time. For an example, note your last post. I make no such assumptions about what is right for you.

But you clearly do not believe in other gods worshipped by other people. You could not “choose” to believe in them, no matter how hard you tried. I cannot “choose” to believe in the god described in the bible.

shepherd

Everyone one of us make the choice to believe in God or not to believe .

Cady555

Evidence. I conclude there is no evidence to justify belief in a supernatural being.

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

Actually, the Hindus have over three million.

TheKingOfRhye

She is not an atheist? Yes she is. What do you think that word means? She doesn’t believe in a god. Therefore, she’s an atheist. (although it sounds like she’s having doubts about maintaining that disbelief, but anyway….) If a god exists, and people don’t believe anyway, they’re still atheists.

Brian

Most of the atheists I know personally grew up in Christian homes. I can respect their feelings if they had a bad experience with religion, but I must admit that I don’t grasp the compulsion to make other people abandon their religion. I had a great experience growing up in church, we were like a big family, lots of fun people, we certainly did not fit anyone’s stereotype of a bunch of glum, sour-faced puritans or killjoys. Our pastor had worked as an engineer for DuPont before he started his second career in the ministry, and he was one of the smartest men I knew, so the notion that Christians are somehow anti-science would have seemed ridiculous. If you had a bad experience with religion, stop and consider that other people’s experiences might be radically different from yours.

Guzzman

Atheists do not typically become atheists because they had a bad experience with religion, it has more to do with the lack of validity of religious claims. That is the biggest turn-off and disappointment by far. It’s like being told as a child that there is a Santa Claus, but then as you acquire critical-thinking skills and begin to evaluate such claims against objective reality, you realize the Santa thing was one big fat lie that was meant to manipulate child behavior. I have a compulsion to tell people there is no Santa, there is no Easter Bunny – you’ve been fed lies your whole life.

And having a good experience with religion does not make religious claims valid. Drug addicts become addicted because drugs give them a good experience, at least in the beginning. Drugs and religion can be coping mechanisms for certain, but that doesn’t speak to the validity of the experiences that they provide. One will eventually have to grow up and face ojective reality.

I grew up in a Christian home, but I had only good experiences with Christianity. I attended a Christian school and the high point of my day was the sermon at the beginning of the school day. The problems came when I started to read the Bible and found that way too much of it makes no sense whatsoever, and both God and Jesus are nasty and vindictive characters.

jael2

Ian,
The reason the Bible makes no sense to you, is because of your unbelief. When a person is lost, without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Bible makes no sense. Once a lost person, is found by Christ, and is saved, the Bible is a fountain of living water from which they drink.

Orion Jones

Have you read the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments, from cover to cover? If you haven’t, how do you know your claim is true?

Frank Dorka

There is news of a study (2/9/16) that compared the Old, New and the Quran for violent content. Know who won hands down?

John N

So you have to belief in the bible to have the bible make sense to you? How strange.

Do you also belief in the Silmarillion? Because, having read both, that book makes so much more sense to me.

Gerald Moore

The Bible is true because the Bible says it is true. The reason the Bible makes no sense to you is because you can make no sense of it. These are very serious tautological circular arguments on which many people base their entire lives.

Cady555

I did not have a bad experience with religion. I have never been angry at god.

I slowly realized that christianity made no difference. People inside the church behaved exactly like people outside the church, both good traits and bad.

So I looked closely at the claims of christianity and read the bible objectively. I decided it was simply silly and it was time to move on.

Stogiebear

It’s typical of those who are narcissistic and emotionally retarded that they cannot empathize, they lack the ability to grasp other people’s emotions. To the narcissist, whatever he hates should be hated by everyone else, whatever he likes should be liked by everyone. Someone with that mentality is, obviously, intolerant and judgmental.

Nikola Tasev

Funny how both sides can say this of the other.
I would not say all religious people are retarded, but they are far more likely to want to outlaw behavior that is contrary to their morality.
For example I think if you want to marry a person of the same sex, or the opposite, or not marry at all, you should be free to do so. But far too many religious people think if they don’t want to marry someone of the same sex no one should be allowed to.

Kyle Everett

Reading this article struck a cord because as an ex-Christian I felt the same after realising that there is no God. Yet if no God exists what is this feeling of someone watching over me?

The answer of course lies in the human psyche, not some supernatural deity whose existence is logically improbable. Years of indoctrination as a Christian child, coupled with a natural human tendency to favour the idea of a benevolent creator God in an otherwise arbitrary world have had powerful psychological effects. Part of religion’s ability to remain relevant throughout human history despite the advancement of reason and science is its grip on the human psyche.

Gary Metzger

She can’t shake God because we’re made in His image, and our inner conscience will NEVER let us forget that. Hopefully she’ll not STAY away from the faith just because some in her church couldn’t or didn’t want to answer her questions. There are plenty of very able theologians who could give very sound answers to her inquiries, and if she’s honest she should seek them out.

John N

There is not a speck of evidence we were made in the image of a god.

There is a lot of evidence indoctrination of children can have nasty, life long consequenses. And I don’t see how more indoctrination of very able theologians could improve that.

FoJC_Forever

Psalm 14:1, Proverbs 26:4, Mark 7:22.

It is senseless to try to convince God exists (or even converse about God, His Word, and His Spirit) with a person who has chosen to believe in self, or science, or reason as all that is necessary to Understand and have Knowledge.

The falsely religious pretending to be Christian compromised many centuries ago when they embraced science (previously considered witchcraft among most peoples) over the present power of Faith, which comes from Jesus (the) Christ – the Eternal Word of God.

Many walk in blindness and believe they are walking in the Light.

Follow Jesus, find Truth.

WorldGoneCrazy

Two pieces of secular evidence that fall in line with the thesis of this article:

“WHILE MILITANT ATHEISTS like Richard Dawkins may be convinced God doesn’t exist, God, if he is around, may be amused to find that atheists might not exist.

Cognitive scientists are becoming increasingly aware that a metaphysical outlook may be so deeply ingrained in human thought processes that it cannot be expunged….

This line of thought has led to some scientists claiming that “atheism is psychologically impossible because of the way humans think,” says Graham Lawton, an avowed atheist himself, writing in the New Scientist. “They point to studies showing, for example, that even people who claim to be committed atheists tacitly hold religious beliefs, such as the existence of an immortal soul….

These findings may go a long way to explaining a series of puzzles in recent social science studies. In the United States, 38% of people who identified themselves as atheist or agnostic went on to claim to believe in a God or a Higher Power (Pew Forum, “Religion and the Unaffiliated”, 2012).”

“At first glance, this finding seemed to reflect an error. How could people be angry with God if they did not believe in God? Reanalyses of a second dataset revealed similar patterns: Those who endorsed their religious beliefs as “atheist/agnostic” or “none/unsure” reported more anger toward God than those who reported a religious affiliation….

The most striking finding was that when Exline looked only at subjects who reported a drop in religious belief, their faith was least likely to recover if anger toward God was the cause of their loss of belief. In other words, anger toward God may not only lead people to atheism but give them a reason to cling to their disbelief.”

Herb Planter

oh what a wicked sin that is to know the lord then turn on him, i pray its god reachin out to you and not your guilty concious

jael2

“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. 20 But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, 21 desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell[d] from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

24 “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. 26 And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’

27 “Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, 28 for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’” Luke 16:

disqus_SUijHfDO8w

He has written eternity on the hearts of men.

The Guest

“The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” ***He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.*** Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. ***In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’*** But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. ***This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.***” Matthew 13:10-23 … “For many are called, but few are chosen.” Matthew 22:14

WeAre TheCheese

I say this as respectfully as it can be said, but I am an atheist and anti-theist because I truly believe the world would be better without religion. I see religion as an irrational concept, and irrational concepts lead to misery and strife. Ridding the world of irrational ideology therefore must be a good thing. In connection with this idea, I see no evidence to suggest good morals cannot be achieved without religion.

So here comes the atheists response to the article: Anything that is inculcated into your psyche for a long time, most especially during youth, is difficult to shake regardless of what new label you take. For this same reason, those who leave cults have a hard time filling the void left behind by the doctrines and teachings of these societies as crazed as they may be. It is also why women who have freed themselves from years of domestic violence may still believe they are worthless, and so on.

The scientific evidence proves humans have a predilection for belief regardless of evidence. That’s it. Using this research as evidence that humans are designed to believe in a god and that therefore God exists must be united under the banner of all supernatural belief. Therefore, in this line of thinking, this research must also be evidence that humans are designed to believe breaking a mirror guarantees 7 years of bad luck therefore mirror harpies (or demons or spirits etc.) must exist.

Nikola Tasev

You are absolutely right.
Humans evolved to err on the side of false positives in pattern matching, not false negatives. That’s how superstition is so widespread.
Then there’s the difficulty in changing habits and thinking patterns.
The best thing about the scientific method is how it lets us reach the correct results despite our biases. It has given us more in 100 years than religion has given us in 2000.

Surely it should be possible to sue someone to make this feeling go away. Or maybe trolling Christian web sites will help? Wild behavior could do the trick. Maybe it is till death do you part. And if you’re wrong (or is that right) then maybe not even then.

jorgelm123

The bible has only one thing to say about atheism: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.”

Dianne

King’s family are praying for her conviction to repent and return to her waiting SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST. Why do so many people throw God aside because of what others cannot answer for them. The Bible tells us to study to show ourselves approved unto GOD…. That means a person should DO THEIR OWN HOMEWORK. If I have a question about the ways of GOD I search for the answers myself. There is too much reliance on others and yet each individual will give an account to GOD for their actions at the judgement seat of CHRIST. No passing the BLAME will be accepted.

MEP1101

Thank you for this article. It reminds us all that atheism, like belief in God is a faith in something we can not prove with physical science – because its nature is metaphysical. And just as some believers in God have doubts or at least unanswered question, atheists are troubled by the same things. God bless this lady, she is so honest.

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